Yo-Yo Ma & Silk Road Ensemble: Bio

"Every time I open a newspaper, I am reminded that we live in a world where we can no longer afford not to know our neighbors. The Silk Road Project is a musical way to get to know our neighbors." - Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma, cellist, has recorded nearly 50 albums and won 14 Grammy Awards. In classical performances, as in his exploration of musical forms outside of the Western classical tradition, Ma strives to find connections that stimulate the imagination. One of Ma's goals is the exploration of music as a means of communication and as a vehicle for the migration of ideas across a range of cultures throughout the world. He established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of cultural, artistic and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents who later moved the family to New York. He began to study cello at the age of four, and is a graduate of the Juilliard School and Harvard University.

Yo-Yo Ma founded and serves as the Artistic Director for the Silk Road Project. He performs with the Silk Road Ensemble, appears on the album Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet and was featured in the photo exhibit entitled The Silk Road Ensemble: Portraits and Places. Ma sometimes performs on the morin khuur [MOO rin HOOR] (Mongolian horsehead fiddle). Visit Yo-Yo Ma's official site (www.yo-yoma.com) to learn more about his recordings.

New Impossibilities, a new live recording by Sony Classical featuring multiple-Grammy-Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Ensemble, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, will be released on July 31. The recording is the result of "Silk Road Chicago," the first city-wide year-long residency spearheaded by the Silk Road Project, the organization founded by Ma as a catalyst for promoting innovation and learning through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary partnerships.

Stories

They may not have known it as they walked in and took their seats in Room 481 at O'Kane Hall before the start of the class, but 30 College of the Holy Cross students would become an unofficial percussion orchestra by the time the session's 75 minutes were up. Actually, you could have called the student percussionists "guest" members of the Silkroad Ensemble, the New York-based musical collective that was at Holy Cross Feb. 5-9 as part of a three-year residency that began in September. Three members of the Silkroad Ensemble - percussionists Haruka Fujii, John Hadfield and Shane Shanahan - were on hand to lead the 11 a.m. Feb. 6 class in 481 O'Kane that would be attended by a combination of students taking an acting and voice class, and students in of one the school's year-long freshman Montserrat program clusters who had recently been studying graphic novels.
READ THE FULL Worcester Telegram ARTICLE
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A letter from Yo-Yo Ma,
Dear Friends,
Silkroad turns twenty next year. Like a teenager approaching adulthood, we are exploring our purpose in the world. For us, this means thinking about how to share what we have learned to build a more hopeful future. One thing we have discovered is the joy and significance of working as an ensemble, and at this turning point, we are formalizing a new approach to leadership that celebrates that collaborative spirit.
To this end, I am thrilled to hand over the artistic direction of Silkroad to Jeffrey Beecher, Nicholas Cords, and Shane Shanahan, three extraordinary colleagues who have taught me so much about collaboration, music, and friendship. Together with Silkroad's executive director, Eduardo A. Braniff, these inaugural co-artistic directors will shape the next chapter of Silkroad, bringing the passion and curiosity that we have developed to new communities and inspiring the radical cultural collaboration that is essential to creating a better world.
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It is a journey that I will be privileged to share with them, and with all of you, as a cellist and a member of the Silkroad Ensemble. Please read their vision for Silkroad and join us.

Music can help express emotions that aren't so easily put to words, and songs from of the Vietnam War era continue to help people identify with feelings from that time period. Songs like John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" and the Rolling Stones "Street Fighting Man" helped filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick with "The Vietnam War," a series which premieres on PBS WVIZ on Sunday. "There are 120 recordings from the period and they are put in the film in chronological order, so you hear music only after it's been released," Novick said. "You can hear the changes in our country as you listen to the music change."
But the filmmakers didn't just use period music. They enlisted Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to create new music to depict a range of emotions, including fear, love and loss. Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble also created improvisations for the 10-part series from watching clips and listening to selections of Vietnamese music.
READ THE FULL IdeaStream: Cleveland ARTICLE & WATCH THE VIDEO
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Members of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble provided an open workshop at The Music District in Fort Collins on Tuesday. The musicians were cellist Mike Block, percussionist Shane Shanahan and flutist Kaoru Watanabe. The workshop was part of the Silk Road Ensemble's circuit in Colorado. The circuit began Monday at New Belgium with a screening of Yo-Yo Ma's documentary "The Music of Strangers" and will continue through the week with a performance on Friday at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park on Friday and a children's show at The Music District on Saturday.
READ THE FULL Rocky Mountain Collegian ARTICLE
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"Falling in love is one of the few human rights that no one can take away," says clarinettist Kinan Azmeh from the stage at Emirates Palace, dedicating the Silk Road Ensemble's final piece to his fellow Syrians who have "managed to fall in love in the past six years". With that, the 13 musicians launch into Wedding, a joyous group extrapolation of the traditional folk melodies one might still hear at a village marriage ceremony, building into an ecstatic improvised coda that distils the very essence of the all-star group founded by celebrity cellist Yo-Yo Ma close to two ­decades ago.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN The National
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If you thought becoming a rocket scientist was hard, try being a percussion soloist. It is something American musician Joseph Gramely entertained for a hot five minutes in his youth, until he realised demand for percussion soloists wasn't exactly high. "Right now in the world, there may be less than you can name on one hand," he says. But, perhaps, fate did him a favour. Instead of forging a path on his own, he has embraced a collaboration. These days, the 56-year-old spends much of his time in his dual role of associate artistic director and performer with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble – which will perform alongside the celebrated cellist at the Emirates Palace Auditorium on Friday March 31 – as part of Abu Dhabi Festival.
READ THE FULL National ARTICLE
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Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov's cello concerto Azul was first commissioned for Yo-Yo Ma by the Boston Symphony, and received its premiere in 2006. Now, over 10 years later, Azul is seeing its first studio release. It's the centerpiece of Brooklyn-based orchestral collective The Knights' project of the same name, set to be released on March 31.
Colin Jacobsen, who leads The Knights alongside his brother Eric, is a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. In the liner notes for the new album, Colin recounts a 2004 trip to Iran, the home of his fellow Silk Road musicians Siamak Aghaei and Kayhan Kalhor. He immersed himself in Iran's rich cultural heritage, learning from and listening to his friends at length. Siamek, who Colin writes "evokes a modern-day Bartok," shared one of his field recordings that featured a small instrument made from the bones of a bird. The music that came from it was connected to an old myth that concerned a bird trying to fly towards the sun. Its first attempts were failures; it wasn't until the bird shed its physical shell that it could transcend earthly limitations. Inspired, Colin wrote Ascending Bird for string quartet. Now, he is unveiling a full orchestral arrangement of the piece, to be included on the forthcoming album.
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Watch Ascending Bird in full, as performed by The Knights featuring Yo-Yo Ma via WQXR: Q2, New York

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This Morning's Open Thread features - The Silk Road Ensemble - Sing Me Home, This latest album from Yo-Yo Ma's Grammy-nominated group is their sixth and highlights guest performers and imaginative sounds that transform the traditional musical landscape. Available from Sony Music Masterworks, Sing Me Home is a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June.
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World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma says "I'm always trying to figure out at some level who I am and how I fit in the world, which is something I think I share with 7 billion other people." That search for both self-identity and global commonality lies at the heart of the film - The Music of Strangers. Released in 2015, The Music of Strangers was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Music Film category, and premiered on HBO last night, where it can now be watched on any of the network's streaming services. It was directed by Morgan Neville, who also did the Academy Award winning 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, and the recent Netflix Original documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence.
The Music of Strangers explores the history and personal stories of the members of The Silk Road Ensemble. Formed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998 as part of arts collective, the group takes its name from the legendary road that connected Europe to Asia and brings together master musicians from around the globe. The film's lush cinematography is as beautiful as any of the music being played, and Neville knows how coax a story out of his subjects which tells a bigger story than the usual musician's anecdotes.
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READ THE DECIDER REVIEW

In 2000, Yo-Yo Ma formed the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of musicians from around the globe. Tonight's HBO special, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble", is a film that follows the musicians as they travel the world, perform, and tell their story. Watch HBO tonight MON. MARCH 6.
Featured in the photo are - Silk Road Strings Director Robert McDonald, Silk Road Project Artistic Administrator Liz Keller-Tripp, Silk Road Ensemble Musician Shane Shanahan, SVP of HBO Documentary Films Nancy Abraham, Silk Road Ensemble Musician Hadi Eldebek, Silk Road Connect Music Director Kristy Jung, Silk Road Project Education Specialist Lori Taylor, and Silk Road Connect Band Director Alex Jung attend day two of the Grand Central Interactive Experience for HBO Documentary "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble" on March 1, 2017 in New York City. (Getty)
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There have been plenty of reflections here at ComicsVerse and in other pop culture-focused publications about the significance of art during the current turbulence of the global political climate. Nationalism has seen a surge in popularity and many countries in the world are closing its doors to turn inward instead of reaching out to support their neighbors in the global village. It seems like a moment of kismet that Morgan Neville's newest documentary THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE provides audiences with a beautiful remedy to the ugliness of global isolationism.
Neville made a name for himself with the Academy Award winning documentary 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, which also focused on a specific niche in the world of music. In this film, Neville's focus is on the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of international musicians under the leadership of renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. READ THE FULL ComicsVerse ARTICLE
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If you'd been standing at the southern entrance to Grand Central Terminal this past Tuesday morning at just the right time, you might have noticed a green-haired Galician bagpiper marching through a crowd of onlookers, her instrument's notes soaring toward the rafters as she ascended a makeshift stage to perform alongside a Syrian clarinetist and an assortment of additional musicians.
The group in question was an offshoot of the Silk Road Ensemble, the Grammy-winning world music collective launched by cellist Yo-Yo Ma to unite the planet's disparate sounds. The aforementioned bagpiper, Cristina Pato (her instrument is known as the gaita in her native Spain), and the clarinetist, Kinan Azmeh, serve as two of Silk Road's core members. They play their instruments alongside musicians from 20 different countries including Balla Kouyate (balafon, Mali), Rauf Islamov (kamancheh, Azerbaijan), Siamak Jahangiry (ney, Iran) and Betti Xiang (erhu, China).
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"For me to discover how much connected the world of classical music and world music were, for a person having two paths but never crossing over from one side to the other, was some sort of a revelation for me," says Pato, who joined Silk Road in 2006. "Then you discover that there are way more things connected than things that are disconnected. And then magic happens."
Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for HBO
READ THE FULL Forbes ARTICLE

Yo-Yo Ma founded Silkroad in 1998 as an organization dedicated to the virtues of multiculturalism and the exchange of musical and artistic ideas. A musical collective with the same mission, the Silk Road Ensemble, soon followed. It was named after the ancient trading route that facilitated the exchange of goods between places as geographically distant as Luoyang and Rome.
It's fitting, then, that earlier this week, several Silk Road Ensemble musicians came together at Grand Central Terminal, another crossroads in one of the world's busiest cities. They were there for a performance to promote the wide release of The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble, Morgan Neville's documentary film that probes the musical souls of several of the ensemble's members. The film grapples with questions that are difficult to answer, such as the meaning of artistic expression, and probes concepts that are equally difficult to describe, such as home and community.
READ THE FULL WQXR: New York ARTICLE

Members of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, Kinan Azmeh and Christina Pato, will be Tom Needham's guests this Thursday on the Sounds of Film on WUSB. They will be talking about their HBO film Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Directed by Academy Award-winning director Morgan Neville. The film tells the story of an extraordinary group of musicians from around the world who have been coming together to celebrate the universal power of music for the past 17 years. The movie follows the members of the international ensemble as they gather in locations around the world, exploring ways that art can preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution. The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble highlights the work of two musicians, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and Galician bagpiper Christina Pato. The film was recently nominated for a Grammy Award.
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The Sounds of Film is the nation's longest-running film-themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live on the Internet. Previous guests include Laurie Anderson, Chuck D., Dionne Warwick, Ralph Macchio, Jim Breuer, Kurtis Blow, Michael Moore and Lalo Schifrin.
READ THE FULL LongIsland.com ARTICLE

With President Trump's current world ban on Muslims entering to the US, it may leave musicians like Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor and Syrian clarinet player Kinan Azmeh unable to reenter the United States. Both these musicians are key players in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble.
World fusion took on classical dimensions when Yo-Yo Ma formed his acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble. He brought together musicians and composers from around the world to create a new dialogue in a hybrid cultural sound. The Silk Road Ensemble is in its 16th year and its music horizons just keep getting broader. Their new album, Sing Me Home features guest performances by guitarist Bill Frisell, banjoist Abigail Washburn, and African kora players Toumani Diabate and Balla Kouyate among eight others from around the world. In addition, there is a new documentary, The Music Of Strangers directed by Morgan Neville who won an Oscar for his film, 20 Feet From Stardom. It debuts on HBO on March 6. We get a few feet from a different kind of stardom with Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Johny Gandelsman and Wu Man of The Silk Road Ensemble.
Yo-Yo Ma and Silk Road Ensemble will be featured on PRI's ECHOES tomorrow, Thursday, February 23.
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Director Morgan Neville seems to be building a career on exploring the hidden sides of the music industry. His 2013 Academy Award-winning documentary 20 FEET FROM STARDOM explored the lives of the unsung heroes of live performance: background singers. His latest documentary, THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE, once again gives the spotlight to a unique group of artists and will be hitting HBO on March 6.
READ THE FULL ComicsVerse ARTICLE
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The latest album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble has surprised and delighted, with guest performers and imaginative sounds that transform the traditional musical landscape. Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and its founding member and guiding light Yo-Yo Ma. Available from Sony Music Masterworks. Sing Me Home is a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers had it's theatrical release in June.
Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble - Sing Me Home wins GRAMMY for 'Best World Music Album'
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Yo-Yo Ma is perhaps one of the few living classical musicians that the masses known by name. The legendary player and composer is already one of the most highly respected acts out there with nothing left to prove, and yet he is always looking to push boundaries, try new things and connect people all around the world with his music. He occasionally writes and records music with a fluctuating group of musicians known as the Silk Road Ensemble (a reference to the historical trade routes that connected China and the East with India, the Middle East and Europe from there). The group has released several albums, including one in mid-2016 that was accompanied by a documentary explaining how the musicians come and go, and how the music that is difficult to describe due to how many different cultural influences are included is crafted.
The Silk Road Ensemble's latest album, Sing Home, is currently nominated for the Grammy for Best World Music Album, and they may or may not wind up taking the prize home when the winners are announced on Sunday, February 12. Forbes - Hugh McIntyre spoke briefly with Yo-Yo Ma about the creative process behind this latest collection of songs. READ THE Forbes Q&A
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Seven musicians from the eclectic Silk Road Ensemble, formed by world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000, traveled to Santa Clara University (SCU) for the New Music Festival Jan. 30 to Feb. 4. Their week of music classes, collaboration, and concerts culminated Feb. 3 in the free public concert "Exploring Home." Perhaps the biggest concert surprise for those not familiar with the Silk Road Ensemble was the atypical pairing of instruments in the opening piece. First came a background buzz, as if the sound equipment were malfunctioning. Next came the sound of Kojiro Umezaki's shakuhachi, a Japanese flute. Then the buzz got louder, becoming the distinctive drone of a Galician bagpipe as Cristina Pato piped her way onto the stage, joining Umezaki for an energetic east meets west interplay bridging their cultures." And that was only the beginning of the concert, not the end," said Ensemble violist Nicholas Cords, from the U.S., once the applause finally died down.
READ THE FULL Santa Clara Weekly REVIEW

In one of many memorable scenes in The Music of Strangers, world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble put on a flash show in front of the harbour wall in Istanbul. The Silk Road Ensemble is a group of virtuoso musicians from various European and Asian traditions; together, they merge the sound of the Chinese pipa into a Romany reel, the double bass into a Lebanese waltz.
People gather immediately to clap along. Some are dancing. "Istanbul is already a city where Europe meets Asia," says Morgan Neville, who filmed several of these pop-up concerts for The Music of Strangers. "And they play with such a joy that is so communicable, people get it right away. Somebody came up to Yo-Yo afterwards and said 'do you guys play weddings'?"
READ THE FULL Sydney Morning Herald ARTICLE

"Layla and Majun" is a love story that's been told and re-told in thousands of variations by poets, minstrels, dancers and musicians throughout the Middle East and Central Asia for centuries. The tragedy of obsessive, forbidden love was turned into the first Middle Eastern opera in 1908, later inspired the classic rock song "Layla." Now, the Silk Road Ensemble has adapted the epic into a one-hour version. The ensemble worked with renowned choreographer Mark Morris to create a multi-media production on its way to the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, being performed this Friday (1/6) and Saturday (1/7).
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Colin Jacobsen is a violinist, composer, and touring member of the Silk Road Ensemble. He arranged the music for "Layla and Majnun" with Alim Qasimov and Johnny Gandelsman. Gandelsman and Jacobsen are also members of the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet. LISTEN TO THE New Hampshire Public Radio SEGMENT
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Sometimes the best stories get left on the cutting room floor. This year, Julie Amacher picks those stories up and shares them with you. She'll count down her six favorite New Classical Tracks interviews of 2016 on "New Classical Tracks, Uncut." For December 16, Julie shares her full conversation with Yo-Yo Ma and Johnny Gandelsman, who talk about their collaboration as part of the Silk Road Ensemble album, Sing Me Home.
In this full-length interview, among several topics, Yo-Yo Ma talks about what makes his collaboration with Gandelsman so special. "I think Johnny's secret is that he gives great parties," Ma says. "And this whole album is really about having a fabulous party … it's like, 'Who would you like to invite to the party and what night?' And that's what we did."
Listen to the New Classical Tracks Feature
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The latest album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble will surprise and delight, with guest performers and imaginative sounds that transform the traditional musical landscape. Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and its founding member and guiding light Yo-Yo Ma. Available from Sony Music Masterworks. Sing Me Homeis a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June.
'Sing Me Home' the new album from Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble makes #8 on TransGlobal 'Best Of for 2016 List'

Oh my god, I so needed this movie right now. And you do too: it is a wonderful respite in our divided times.tweet Let veteran music documentarian Morgan Neville - he made the amazing 20 Feet from Stardom - introduce you to the Silk Road Ensemble. They are a sort of supergroup of musicians from countries along that ancient trading route who play traditional instruments - from different traditions, mind - in modern arrangements to produce gorgeous, lush music unlike anything you've ever heard before.tweet (You get a lot of it in the film, and then you will want to instantly buy all their albums, because you Will. Need. More.)
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This soul-refreshing documentary celebrates difference as a beautiful thing vital to making great art, and for making a better world for everyone.tweet. READ THE FULL Flick Filosopher REVIEW

Two years ago Morgan Neville was an Academy Award winner with Twenty Feet from Stardom, a film which used music as a prism to explore society, culture and politics – which he has sought to emulate with his latest offering The Music of Strangers. Though undoubtedly achieving all of the above, what transpires is a film lacking that certain spark, and the ability to sustain a viewer's engagement for the entirety of this feature length documentary.
Our story centres around the renowned, multi-Grammy winning (18 in total) cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was behind the conception of The Silk Road Project, assembling a collection of some of the world's most resourceful, talented musicians, from a host of different cultures and backgrounds. Including the likes of Chinese pipa player Wu Man, to Spanish bagpiper Cristina Patp. Also among the ranks are Syrian clarinet player Kinan Azmeh and the Iranian Kayhan Kalhor, a virtuoso on the traditional instrument the ‘kamancheh'. Between them comes a myriad of conflicting styles, and while initially many doubted whether this ambitious endeavour would work, the millions of records purchased, and sold-out concerts around the world, would suggest it's been something of a success.
READ THE FULL HeyUGuys ARTICLE

How does one get people to attend concerts of new music? One way is to invite a celebrity artist to perform and audiences will pretty much swallow up whatever music is offered. That is a cynical way of looking at things, but what else could explain the Esplanade Concert Hall being filled to the rafters on two evenings featuring superstar Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing mostly modern works? To be fair, his imprimatur ensured that good contemporary music played by other excellent soloists with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) conducted by Shui Lan was heard by far more people than otherwise. Widening people's ears, breaking down barriers and fostering warm ties between diverse global cultures were always the mission of Ma's Silk Road Ensemble - truly a worthy cause for celebration.
READ THE FULL Straits Times ARTICLE

Singer Rhiannon Giddens joins international music collective Silk Road Ensemble to perform "St. James Infirmary Blues," spiking the American folk song that Louis Armstrong popularized in the 1920s with Romani influence and mischievous energy.
Since 2005, singer, fiddler and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens has been energizing audiences with her fiery performances with Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops. She's interpreted fragments of Dylan with the New Basement Tapes (along with fellow group members Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford).
Inspired by the exchange of ideas and traditions along the historical Silk Road, cellist Yo-Yo Ma established Silkroad in 1998 to explore how the arts can advance global understanding. Since 2000, the Silk Road Ensemble has been at the core of Silkroad's work. Representing a global array of cultures, the Ensemble models new forms of cultural exchange through performances, workshops and residencies. The artists of the Ensemble draw on the rich tapestry of traditions from around the world that make up our many-layered contemporary identities, weaving together the foreign and familiar to create a new musical language.
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics - from science to business to global issues - in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
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Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (2013's Twenty Feet from Stardom) teams up with acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma to tell the fascinating and emotionally stirring tale of the Silk Road Ensemble. An eclectic collective of traditional artists, hailing from some of the world's most remote and turbulent regions, the group attempts to find common ground through the musical arts, while championing unique cultural expression from their disparate home countries.
Fifteen years after its conception, Silk Road is now a successful multicultural educational programme embedded everywhere from New York's inner-city schools to Harvard University. But the original focus of the project continues, and Neville's film follows Ma as he assembles – almost Seven Samurai style – his latest orchestra for a special reunion concert. Some of the participants in Ma's musical collective have braved repression to continue playing, and the film celebrates music's unique ability to unite people.
READ THE FULL South China Morning Post 4/5 stars REVIEW

The Silk Road Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma's grandly all-encompassing world music band that seeks to find meeting points for musical traditions from China to Europe, has proved after 18 years to be the ever-curious cellist's most valuable project. Whether this group has managed to make an iota of difference in peace and understanding along the Silk Road might be answered with a glance at the headlines on any given day. They suggest that no one has been listening.
But the Silk Road Ensemble has nevertheless produced a legacy of sometimes bold polystylistic fusions - six albums' worth, along with the recent documentary film, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble." Although the personnel shifts from project to project, no fewer than nine members of the ensemble who played the first L.A. appearance in Royce Hall in 2002 were on hand for its U.S. tour-ending gig Sunday night at Hollywood Bowl. That's more than half of the 17-person group.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
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At a Silk Road Ensemble performance, it's easy to zero in on a single moment and think you'll never hear such a beautiful sound again. Then, after you've been captivated by Kinan Azmeh's embroidered clarinet playing and Jeffrey Beecher's thick jungle of bass tones, it happens again: A single "thwap" from Wu Man's pipa strikes a touchpoint and causes you to feel connected, like kin, regardless of your ethnicity. Minutes later, as Cristina Pato sets aside her Galician bagpipes (gaita) to wander into melody on the piano, a startling thought disrupts: That fellow with the cello weaving his way in and out of Pato's sensitive playing is the renowned Yo-Yo Ma, founder of the ensemble-and you've noticed him as merely equal to the rest. But it's a passing thought because he's playing along as if he's just a guy in a band: A star amid other stars is simply one point in a galaxy.
Such were the mini pinnacles on Thursday, August 18, which added up to a mountain range of world music at Berkeley's Hearst Greek Theatre. A cool but not cold breeze caused tree branches to sway and people wrapped themselves in blankets at the outdoor venue, but the 15 musicians performing on Eastern and Western instruments were hot. Especially in the first half of the program, the colors and textures of individual instruments-and the artists who played them-expressed their subtle and grand capabilities. The second act presented three works too similar in structure-solos that turned the same corner to wind up in splashy, whole-ensemble frenzies. But that seems like a minor objection.
Yo-Yo Ma with the Silk Road Ensemble in Berkeley | Credit: Eli Zaturanski
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There was a roar Thursday that even the evening's muggy heat couldn't dampen as cellist Yo-Yo Ma walked onto the stage as almost an afterthought following the other 16 members of his Silk Road Ensemble. And this excitement bristled throughout the 2½ hours of a musical fellowship at Wolf Trap that wove the sounds and idioms of East and West, tradition and innovation, into a compellingly upbeat program (much of which is available on their new CD, "Sing Me Home").
There were the cheers that greeted splendid clarinetist Kinan Azmeh's wildly celebratory "Wedding," an evocation of a party in a small Syrian village, in fact, that erupted at even the mention of Syrian musicians. There were giggles of laughter as Cristina Pato, wielding her gaita (a Galician bagpipe), and Wu Tong with his suona (a sort of Chinese oboe), tried to outdo each other in competitive virtuosity, and when Wu Man performed miracles of dexterous athleticism on her amplified pipa (a Chinese lute). And there were gasps of appreciation as a percussion section rooted in the Indian, Arabic, African and Asian worlds collaborated in almost irresistible complexity.
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The exceptionally talented young professionals who make up Tanglewood Music Center's prestigious fellows program learn orchestral repertoire and performance techniques from some of the top conductors and soloists of the classical music world. This summer, at TMC's inaugural Global Musicians Workshop, 18 lucky fellows are learning from music masters of a very different kind, each versed in indigenous music from around the world and part of superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma's acclaimed Silk Road Project, born at Tanglewood in 1998. Since its inception, Ma has introduced unique collaborations between western and eastern musicians to audiences worldwide. The week-long workshop will culminate in a performance by faculty and fellows on Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall.
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"The Music of Strangers" elegantly documents the origins and success of the Silk Road Ensemble and its many members. Directed by Morgan Neville, it follows famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma on his search to gather the most talented musicians from around the globe in order to create beautiful music that can transcend cultural divides.
Created in the early 2000s, the Silk Road Ensemble began with the convergence of numerous musicians at Tanglewood, a performing center those of us in the Northeast know as being a summer mecca for classical performances. A fever dream of Yo-Yo Ma, the group began as an attempt to join together the sounds of cultures across the world, and to use one of the most universal languages, music, to unite people.
While the ensemble has had many members over the years, those featured in the film are among the most prominent that agreed to join Ma, such as Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist, Kayhan Kalhor, the most well-known Kamancheh played from Iran, Wu Man, who hails from China and plays the lesser-known pipa, and Cristina Pato, whose soothing vocals and unique affliction for the Galician bagpipe rounds out the group.
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A new documentary film, The Music of Strangers, and a companion CD, Sing Me Home, feature Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble exploring how music can make us feel at home, no matter where we live. The film from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the Sing Me Home album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
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This was the question renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma asked himself in 2000, when he first pulled together more than 60 world-class musicians and composers for an epic classical jam session that eventually evolved into a global supergroup of sorts called the Silk Road Ensemble. The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble goes a long way - literally - in its efforts to answer that question as it tells the story of Ma and the group and their struggles to make their divergent backgrounds merge into beautiful music. Director Morgan Neville, an Oscar winner two years ago for his brilliant documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, bounds across the globe to tell the stories of these musicians hailing from places like Iran, Syria, Spain and China.
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In light of recent tragedy and political turmoil around the world, we need music now more than ever-not as a distraction or an escape, but as a gateway toward experiencing our shared humanity. We need music to open our hearts, our ears, and our minds. We need music to connect us in ways which transcend language, religion, tradition, and geography.
That's the idea behind Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, a global music collective comprised of performers and composers from over 20 countries throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.
With such an array of distinct cultures and musical voices present in their collective, the music of the Silk Road Ensemble is at once contemporary and ancient, familiar and foreign, traditional and innovative. The group makes culturally conscious music, drawing upon instruments, ideas, and traditions from around the world to create music that is reflective of our 21st century global society.
Their new album Sing Me Home is a musical culmination of this ethos. Silk Road members each selected a musical work of personal significance to them, then invited guest musicians from different cultural and musical backgrounds to collaborate with the ensemble on each piece.
The result is an album which travels fearlessly from the folk melodies of Macedonia to the traditional textiles of Mali, from the fiddle ditties of Ireland to the harvest songs of Galicia, and from the taiko tunes of Japan to the sitar suites of India.
"When you listen to the album you'll hear how different our homes are," Yo-Yo Ma said. "For us, this is one of the great pleasures of Silk Road: we celebrate difference; we cultivate curiosity in our exploration and generosity in our sharing. In our home, something completely unfamiliar presents a precious opportunity to build something new."
Released as a companion album to the documentary film The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the album stands confidently on its own as a glimpse into the music and personal memories that most inspire the individual artists of the ensemble.
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Opening tonight at the Cinema Center, "The Music of Strangers" is a new documentary by Morgan Neville that explores Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble's concept of music as a universal language. A few weeks ago, members of the Ensemble shared their techniques right here in Indiana, with the 2nd annual Global Musician Workshop, hosted by DePauw University. "Fewer things bring people together like music," says Cinema Center's Executive Director, Jonah Crismore, adding that, "It is through the art of film, and the story of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, that Cinema Center is able to bring more beautiful music to the community."
For insight on the mission shared by the film, the Ensemble, and the Workshop alike, Eric Edberg, DePauw's Faculty Liaison to Silk Road Ensemble's Global Musician Workshop, took time out from his own vacation travels to join Northeast Indiana Public Radio Julia Meek and discuss the power of those musical "ties that bind."

Filmmaker Morgan Neville, whose 2013 music documentary 20 Feet from Stardom won the Oscar as Best Documentary Feature, brings the same insight and enthusiasm to The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a self-explanatory chronicle of the classical-music "super group" formed by the esteemed cellist. The members of the Ensemble hail from all corners of the globe, and for some, their musical abilities were a way to escape countries rife with strife. The scenes where they tell their stories are usually accompanied by their own playing, which adds a further emotional tone to the proceedings. Through all the tumult and tragedy, their beacon has always been their music.
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Since he was child, French-born cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been revered for the way he brings classical compositions to life. But a lifetime playing the works of long-dead Western composers night after night can make even the most dedicated genius feel mired in routine rather than blessed by a calling.
In part to remedy this professional hazard, Ma - with a rotating group of international musicians, working as the Silk Road Ensemble - has since 2000 recorded and performed challenging music outside the canon, using both familiar instruments and idiosyncratic tools. His cello has harmonized with Iranian Kayhan Kalhor's kamancheh (strings of a different kind), Cristina Pato's gaita (a Spanish bagpipe), Wu Man's Chinese lute or pipa, and Syrian Kinan Azmeh's clarinet.
The Music of Strangers documents the group as it finds balance among seemingly incompatible instruments and cultures - an effort that hasn't come without struggle. Kalhor and Azmeh are living in exile, while Wu grew up in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution. Its director, Morgan Neville, has made a name for himself with documentaries about Brian Wilson and Keith Richards, as well as 20 Feet From Stardom, a moving visit with a storied clique of backup singers. That film gave its subjects long-overdue attention - and won Neville an Oscar.
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Yo-Yo Ma is renowned as a cellist, but he's also a master communicator. One of his peers remembers him drawing two overlapping circles on a restaurant napkin. The Venn diagram, he said, represented two cultures. The overlap was where new ideas are formed. This was the simple yet profound thinking that led Ma, at the turn of the century, to create the Silk Road Ensemble, taking its name from the ancient trade route and bringing together musicians from Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Director Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies, 20 Feet from Stardom) spends time with Ma and several of the group's musicians, exploring their cultures and the sometimes tragic life stories that come from living through revolutions and political upheaval. But as more than one of the performers notes, music transcends culture, history and even language.
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No matter where you go in the world, you'll find someone who speaks music. So what happens when a motley crew of international artists look for the universal thread that unites their traditions? Does their art matter in a world "as messed up" as this one? Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies) explores these questions in his new documentary, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble. Describing the film as his most personal to date, the director explore the humanizing power of art and value of music as a tool for social change.
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To help celebrate summer, cities in North America are giving away tickets to see a screening of The Music of Strangers: Yo–Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble by acclaimed director Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies, 20 Feet from Stardom, Johnny Cash's America). The Music of Strangers follows an ever-changing lineup of performers drawn from the ensemble's more than 50 instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.
The film will screen on Thursday, July 7th, 2016 at 7 p.m. at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox Cinema 4 (350 King St. W, Toronto ON M5V 3X5). Jeff Beecher (a member of The Silk Road Ensemble) will also be in attendance at the screening and will be doing a Q&A following the screening. To enter just fill out the form below with your name and mailing address and follow us on Twitter @MusicalToronto and RT this Tweet. SEE Musical Toronto PAGE
The film will also screen at San Diego's Landmark Hillcrest Theatres. Enter the Sweepstakes which begin on June 30, 2016 at 8:00pm (PT) and ends on July 7, 2016 at 11:59pm (PT). You must be at least 18 years old, a legal U.S. resident and reside within the station's Total Market Area (TMA) as defined by Nielsen. See Official Contest Rules for more details. One (1) entry per person per day (not e-mail address). Five (5) winners will be notified via e-mail on July 8, 2016. Prize must be claimed at radio station during regular business hours: Monday-Friday 8:30am-5:30pm. SEE THE KOGO 660 - IHeart Radio PAGE
You can watch the The Music of Strangers trailer here

In the five decades since the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, then just 7 years old, performed for President John F. Kennedy, his name has become virtually synonymous with classical music. But it is an entirely different sort of music, one almost undefinable, that is at the heart of "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," the new movie from filmmaker Neville Morgan. "I'd like to hope that it's a kind of contemporary classical, or world music that is not about homogenization," says Ma over the phone, shortly before performing with the Baltimore Symphony. "It is actually organic."
READ THE FULL The San Diego Union-Tribune ARTICLE

Over the past 16 years, an extraordinary group of musicians has come together to celebrate the universal power of music. Named for the ancient trade route linking Asia, Africa and Europe, The Silk Road Ensemble, an international collective created by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, exemplifies music's ability to blur geographical boundaries, blend disparate cultures and inspire hope for peace and global cooperation on the part of both artists and audiences.
You don't have to be an anthropologist or ethnomusicologist to know that cultures influence each other. To take an obvious example, so-called "Gypsy" music can be heard in every national style from the flamenco of Spain to the sound of the Russian balalaika. And speaking of which, guitar or dulcimer-type instruments can be found in world music almost anywhere you look. Indeed, as Yo-Yo Ma says, "The intersection of cultures is where new things emerge." Like human genetics, which can suffer from too much inbreeding, culture needs to be allowed to cross-pollinate and grow if it is to survive.
"The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble" is the latest film from the creators of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom and the critically-hailed Best of Enemies. It follows an ever-changing lineup of performers drawn from the ensemble's more than 50 instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.
READ THE FULL People's World REVIEW

Music is a universal language we all speak. Regardless of what religion you are or where you live in the world, the idea of music is woven into the fabric of culture and everyday life. Granted, the style of music can vary from country to country, religion to religion, friend to friend, but the idea of music can be heard worldwide. This very concept is explored in the new documentary, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.
A movie 15 years (or more) in the making, it takes a look at various musicians, their heritages, backgrounds, cultures, instruments and the blending of all these factors to make a hybrid sound that can appeal to many. It brings together the well-known idea that music can inspire, heal and unite. The movie opens with a look at Yo-Yo Ma, the cello child prodigy who has lived most of his life in the musical spotlight. In 2000 he brought together a variety of musicians from all over the world for a workshop in Massachusetts without a clear objective in mind. What emerged was a seedling of an idea that has simmered over the past 16 years.
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Typical of so much video associated with the beloved, charismatic cellist Yo-Yo Ma, The Music of Strangers is full of humanitarian philosophy and picturesque shots of artist and cello in exotic locales. But preemptive skepticism is best placed on hold. Morgan Neville's high-budget HBO documentary about Ma and the musicians in his cross-cultural Silk Road Ensemble captures all manner of real-life moments - especially as the initial kumbaya purpose behind the group's formation in 2000 becomes complicated and heightened with the geopolitics of our time.
Backing up for a sec, the documentary spells out how Ma, now 60 and raised in America by Chinese parents, came so early and easily to classical music success that much of the rest of his career has been about answering the "Now what?" question. Ma also admits that the touring life was such that leaving home made him physically ill - his son Nicholas says he once thought his dad worked at Boston's Logan Airport - and left him looking for greater social purpose amid the rigors of fame.
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The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble is a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville. The film tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization, and is playing in theatres throughout the US all this month, the film has was awarded by The Provincetown International Film Festival.
The Music of Strangers is the companion film to Silk Road new album - Sing Me Home. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.

With a documentary called "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," there's no doubting that wonderful sounds will be in store. But that's not all that's on offer. For, as directed by Morgan Neville, "Strangers" turns out to be as concerned with emotion as with performance, spending much of its time investigating how so much joyous music was able to come out of exploration, disturbance, even pain. At the center of everything is 60-year-old cellist Ma, one of his generation's most prolific and popular classical artists, with more than 90 albums and 18 Grammy wins to his credit, a total he self-deprecatingly dismisses by saying "it's all statistics." "Strangers" is the story of how and why in the year 2000 this consummate musician decided to branch out into unexpected areas and create the Silk Road Ensemble, an international music collective that has produced six albums and given concerts seen by 2 million people in 33 countries. And director Neville is very much the filmmaker for the job of telling it.
READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times REVIEW

The Silk Road Ensemble is known for its daring cross-cultural experiments, bringing musicians from different traditions together to jam and see what new sounds emerge from the mix of instruments, styles and cultures. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma launched the ensemble 16 years ago when he invited musicians from countries once linked by the ancient Silk Road to come to the U.S. and, in his own words, "see what might happen when strangers meet." The short answer is, a great deal. The international collective has produced six albums and dozens of new compositions and toured the world, but Ma has even greater goals for the cross-cultural ensemble. "What we're really trying to do as a group, we want to build communicative bridges between cultures," he said.
The power of music to cross cultures and create empathy is the subject of a new documentary film, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," coming to Chicago on Friday. The film is directed by Morgan Neville, whose "20 Feet from Stardom" won an Academy Award for best documentary in 2014. The film follows a handful of musicians who are mainstays of Silk Road as they grapple with eternal questions that artists have always asked: Why is art important? How do you find your voice? And what is the role of culture in this troubled world?
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Since its inception in 1998, the Silk Road Ensemble (SRE) has closely contended with musical universals. The Harvard-affiliated group led by world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a sprawling cast of master musicians and composers from around the world that, according to its website, seeks to "connect the world through the arts." Sing Me Home makes a strong case for SRE's mission as the featured artists and the pieces they bring to the table originate from geographical sources on and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade route, including Macedonia, China, Galician Spain, Mali, Punjabi India, Syria, and the US. The album's liner notes, written by performers or composers of the songs, seek to personalize the creation and reception of the music, filling in gaps left by anticipated language and cultural barriers. Lyrics and English translations are provided where relevant.
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Global Village welcomes in the first full day of the new season with songs of summer. On Tuesday, June 21, as part of the June Silk Road feature, Global Village pays a visit this time to Central Asia – the crossroads for all the paths along the Silk Road. We'll hear music from the Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble inspired by Turkmenistan, Uzbek star Yulduz Usmanova, traditional music from Kyrgyzstan's Damira Njazbekova, and some heavy metal folk from Kazakhstan's Ulytau. Plus new music from Western Sahara's Aziza Brahim, Finland's Sampo Lassila Narinkka, and the U.S. Virgin Islands' Stanley & the Ten Sleepless Knights.
On Thursday, June 23, Global Village highlights more world-jazz artists and recordings including Rabih Abou-Khalil - whose music offers a unique blend of Middle Eastern music and jazz and who has worked with the Silk Road Ensemble.
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Call it a gift - or an affliction - but part of why Yo-Yo Ma is so in demand is that he's so darn likable. The megastar cellist who once made headlines when he forgot his cello in a cab - see, he's human just like us (and, yes, it was returned) - is perhaps the world's most well-known classical musician.
But these days he's not content to knock out one concerto after the next. In 2000, he formed the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of international musicians whose concerts, outsize personalities and outreach to struggling populations are chronicled in a new documentary, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," which opens on Long Island on June 24. Moving, maddening and inspirational, the film follows Ma and other Ensemble members, chronicling their lives, motivation and music made on a variety of odd-shaped instruments. (The group's latest album, "Sing Me Home," is out on Amazon and iTunes.) READ THE Newsday Q&A

Morgan Neville's documentary "The Music of Strangers" is about the multicultural Silk Road Ensemble assembled in 2000 by the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma. But this is no mere concert film. As is usually the case with Neville's work, most notably in his Oscar-winning "20 Feet From Stardom," the music is in many ways the pretext for an examination of the musicians' lives. We wouldn't care so much about those lives if we didn't also care about the music. In "The Music of Strangers," the sounds these gifted artists make are the truest expressions of themselves.
Ma is the film's centerpiece, but he shares the spotlight with a dazzling array of musicians, many with politically fraught histories. The virtuosos from the 20-member ensemble that Neville focuses on come from all over the globe, including Spain, Iran, China, and Syria. Ma's goal was to divine a kind of universal musical language after a career that began as a child prodigy. (We see an amazing clip of him at age 7, with a cello almost as big as he is, standing resolutely on stage with Leonard Bernstein.)
READ THE FULL Christian Science Monitor ARTICLE

When you're as wonderfully talented as Yo-Yo Ma is, you're allowed to less-than-perfect in other areas of your life - or even "terrible," as the famed cellist admits. In an exclusive interview with FNM, the world-renowned musician fills us in on the silly, semi-shameful secret he usually keeps to himself, but not before a quick prelude about his latest projects: a new film called "The Music of Strangers" and its accompanying album "Sing Me Home." "The documentary explores the life of five different musicians from around the world," Yo-Yo Ma tells us. "It kind of gives you an insider's point of view into what the world is like from their eyes … how they communicate their passion with audiences all around the world."
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A little more than 15 minutes into "The Music of Strangers," a new documentary by director Morgan Neville about Yo-Yo Ma and his pan-cultural Silk Road Project, the world-famous cellist is seen addressing an audience, TED Talk-style. He's recounting a high-profile 1980s interview, during which he'd been asked what his next project might be. "Casting about for something, anything, I said that I had always been fascinated by - guess what? - the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert," Ma tells the audience - and, in an inserted flashback, Charlie Rose, his original interrogator. Eyes wide, Ma shrugs theatrically. "Yeah," he adds, acknowledging how unlikely his youthful aspiration had seemed.
Moments later, Ma is jamming with Kalahari Bushmen, engaging joyously in an encounter that few classical-music superstars likely would have contemplated, let alone undertaken. READ THE FULL Boston Globe ARTICLE

On Friday, June 17th at 9:00 PM EST on WNYC 93.9 FM - THE DINNER PARTY DOWNLOAD from American Public Media will air an interview hosted by Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam in conversation with Yo-Yo Ma on behalf of THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS & SING ME HOME. Available from Sony Music Masterworks, Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and was developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: the documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville.
Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
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Call it a gift - or an affliction - but part of why Yo-Yo Ma is so in demand is that he's so darn likable. The megastar cellist who once made headlines when he forgot his cello in a cab - see, he's human just like us (and, yes, it was returned) - is perhaps the world's most well-known classical musician.
But these days he's not content to knock out one concerto after the next. In 2000, he formed the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of international musicians whose concerts, outsize personalities and outreach to struggling populations are chronicled in a new documentary, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," which opens on Long Island on June 24. Moving, maddening and inspirational, the film follows Ma and other Ensemble members, chronicling their lives, motivation and music made on a variety of odd-shaped instruments. (The group's latest album, "Sing Me Home," is out on Amazon and iTunes.)
READ THE FULL Newsday ARTICLE

One of the world's best-known classical musicians, Yo-Yo Ma makes a surprising confession in a new documentary. "Out of the 35 years I've been married, I've been gone for 22 of those years. Traveling. Away," he says in the film. "I better find a good reason to say why am I doing this." 'The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble' follows the cellist on his quest. When he launched the Silk Road Ensemble, Mr. Ma wanted to step outside his life of concert-hall orthodoxy and go beyond even a series of successful crossover projects that helped make him a household name. "There's a fork in the road, you take it," said Mr. Ma, a Juilliard School and Harvard University-educated artist who has won 18 Grammy Awards. "You don't know where it's going to bring you."
READ THE FULL Wall Street Journal ARTICLE

Making a truly joyful noise throughout the world for some years now, the Silk Road Ensemble is an eclectic mix of international musicians who come together and jam, bringing their various diverse instruments and cultures to deliver art to the people in the most utopian manner. They joined up at the behest of none other than superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who came up with the idea as a way of staying truly engaged in music, after having completely conquered the classical world with his huge talent and charisma.
Morgan Neville, who also made the wonderful, Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom, has deposited an informal biography of Ma at the center of his film-we see him as a seven-year-old prodigy, performing for the Kennedy White House, and later as the "Golden Child" from Harvard. Unsurprisingly, the renowned cellist proves a wonderful camera subject and nicely loose host for the proceedings. Although you may leave The Music of Strangers wanting to know more about the complexities and less affably grinning side of this genius performer, there are enough colorful personalities with fascinating pasts to give the doc a wonderfully warm fund of human interest.
READ THE FULL Film Journal REVIEW

"Since the advent of the nuclear age, we've developed the capacity to destroy ourselves. We can commit mass mutual suicide. We can now do this in a number of different ways," cellist Yo-Yo Ma reflected in a recent interview. "But with the power of the human spirit, we can all work collectively together to not have horrible things happen," he added with hope. "We have to do the work that's in between. The greatest possibility of what a Steve Jobs or a Michelangelo or a Leonardo Da Vinci can create is kind of like a goal post of what we should all aim towards, because if we don't aim for something like that, we can all just slide."
Ma's goal? To bring people together through music. To help him achieve that, he founded Silkroad, a non-profit organization that serves as an incubator for intercultural exchange through music. The Silk Road Ensemble brings together musicians from around the world and has been touring the world since 2000. Since then, Ma said, "I think the thing we've learned about the human spirit, or at least what activates it, is common values. Our message is very simple: we build bridges, not walls."
READ THE FULL WFMT: Chicago POST

If the screen went dark during "The Music of Strangers," that would be a disappointment. But if the sound failed, that would be a tragedy. While this documentary, subtitled "Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," is lovely to watch, it's even more beautiful to hear. "I'm always trying to figure out, at some level, who I am and how I fit in the world, which I think is something that I share with seven billion other people," Mr. Ma says early in the film. That curiosity led him to assemble the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of some 50 musicians and other artists from across the globe. "This was like the Manhattan Project of music," one interviewee says of the group, which was founded in 2000.
Morgan Neville, the documentary's director, follows the ensemble as it performs, and profiles a few of its members - among them Kayhan Kalhor, a kamancheh player from Iran, and Kinan Azmeh, a clarinetist from Syria - who speak about the threatened traditions of their homelands. There are discussions of the relevance of music in a violent world, and of the stress of staying true to one's art while mixing with other styles. It's both thoughtful and lively, and a nice companion to last year's "Song of Lahore," another documentary that looks at the melding of musical cultures.
READ THE FULL New York Times REVIEW

Morgan Neville follows up his 2014 Academy Awarding-winning documentary "20 Feet from Stardom" with "The Music of Strangers: The Silk Road Project," a documentary about cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his visionary group the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of over 60 musicians, composers, teachers and cultural entrepreneurs from around the world.
For decades, Ma has captivated millions with his virtuosity on the concert stage, brilliant recordings and as a leading figure in classical music winning every industry accolade. Ma's legendary career is the backdrop to Neville's portrait, but the filmmaker's more compelling focus is on Ma's search for artistic fulfillment and the need to explore new creative realms. He reveals the driven, private artist and his endless mission to bring together a borderless world of music.
Neville catches Ma's self-effacing backstage comments as he listens to an announcer laud his achievements as a superstar musician, who was first introduced to the world on television by Leonard Bernstein at age 7. Ma admits that he "didn't particularly pursue music. I fell into it." A child prodigy, anyone who heard him perform baroque repertory, particularly Bach, recognized that they are hearing a virtuosic talent. Despite such an auspicious start, famed composer-teacher Leon Kushner told the young Ma that, while he was a technically brilliant player, he "hadn't found his voice."
Ma found his voice, and the voices of many, when he formed The Silk Road Project in 2000. Since then they have changed the musical landscape with explorations of ancient music, instruments and a global realm of musical fusion. The documentary follows the musicians as they create material on tour for their 2016 recording, "Sing Me Home." Neville also tells the story of many of the musicians, who in fact have had to leave their home countries because of repression or conflict.
READ THE FULL EdgeMediaNetwork REVIEW

Since it was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma 16 years ago, the Silk Road Ensemble - an artistic collective comprised of master musicians and other artists from more than 20 countries, spanning the globe - has become an incubator for inspiring cross-cultural collaborations.
The group has also become the subject of a new documentary directed by filmmaker Morgan Neville, who won both an Oscar and a Grammy for his 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, which chronicled the paths of five backup singers from some of rock's biggest hits. This film, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, chronicles both the evolution of the group and personal journeys of some of its members - several of whom who have endured life-shattering tragedies.
Earlier this week, Ma and Neville joined me at HBO's headquarters in New York for a special evening to mark the release, which included this brief but beautiful performance by the cellist and a screening of the film. As Ma told All Things Considered host Robert Siegel a life in music has provided him with avenues to traverse an incredible amount of terrain - artistic, intellectual and emotional. LISTEN TO THE NPR SEGMENT

Yo-Yo Ma is very funny at the start of "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble." He walks into a room, instrument in hand, sits down on a sofa and says to the camera, "This is my cello. Have you ever seen one before?" Well, its curvy body does look familiar, and we've definitely seen the man who plays it, bright spirit that he is; we may even have heard the ensemble's recordings. Still,Morgan Neville's documentary is a joyous revelation, a group portrait of superb musicians from all over the world offering music as an emblem of what people can do in these fractious times when they live in concert with one another.
The first extended sample of their music is thrilling-so much so that I wish the movie had found room for many long takes, though it's full of other pleasures and surprises. (Mr. Neville won an Oscar two years ago for his documentary feature "20 Feet From Stardom.") We see the ensemble playing in Istanbul, in a pretty public square on the Bosporus. They're a polyglot lot, some with exotic instruments, others with familiar strings, reeds and drums; one singer has a voice strong enough to be heard on the other side of the city across the water. Mr. Ma stands toward the rear of the group, plucking his cello like a standup bass and rocking in rhythm like the cosmopolitan enthusiast he has long been.

If your favorite film genre is documentaries, you'll definitely want to see The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble when it opens in New York and Los Angeles theaters Friday, June 10 and other cities shortly. As I shared in my interview with Yo-Yo on Parade.com, the ensemble is a magical musical collective he assembled to share the wonders of the universal power of music.
The new feature-length documentary from filmmaker Morgan Neville and friends follows the ensemble, a group of diverse instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers with a 16-year track record. They explore the power of music to preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution and inspire hope. You'll see it all in performance footage, personal interviews and archival film.
If you're curious about the name, so was I. The fabled Silk Road was a complex network of highways, footpaths and ancient trails connecting the world's far-flung civilizations, including China, India, Persia, Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It encompassed more than 4,600 miles of trade routes.
Inspired by the exchange of ideas and traditions along the historical Silk Road, cellist Yo-Yo established the art collective, Silkroad, in 1998 to explore how the arts can advance global understanding. It's been affiliated with Harvard University since 2005.
Morgan, 48, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary and a Grammy for Best Music Film in 2014 for his captivating work, 20 Feet from Stardom. The film fosters a new appreciation for the legendary background singers you've heard for decades, singing tunes that many know by heart. I've watched it five times. Ditto for his 2015 film, Keith Richards: Under the Influence. See them both on Netflix.
In this interview, find out what makes Morgan tick and don't miss his The Music of Strangers. Here's the complete screening schedule by location. Take a peek at the trailer now on Parade.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble is in its 16th year and its music horizons just keep getting broader. Their new album, Sing Me Home, features guest performances by guitarist Bill Frisell, banjoist Abigail Washburn, African kora players Toumani Diabate, Balla Kouyate and among eight others musicians from around the world. In addition, there is a new documentary, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble," opens tomorrow June 10. Directed by Morgan Neville who won an Oscar for his film, "20 Feet From Stardom." I get a few feet from a different kind of stardom with Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Johnny Gandelsman and Wu Man of the Silk Road Ensemble.
Listen to the Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble - Echoes Podcast

New Classical Tracks is a Syndicated Feature airing Nationally on Classical 24 & Statewide on Minnesota Public Radio. Listen to Julie Amacher's Feature with Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT - "I realized that all the things I was interested in, the world, what people did, how they thought, why they did what they did. And somehow it was possible to explore all of that through music. What is the motivation, what story are you telling me? And that was revelatory, that was freeing and I guess Silk Road is kind of a way of doing that so it's kind of a personal way of exploring the world."
So says cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who created The Silk Road Ensemble as a musical experiment 16 years ago. Most of the musicians were strangers. They didn't even speak the same language. Over the years, this family of multicultural musicians has grown. On its latest collaboration, Sing me Home, we hear unique stories about home, and what that means to each of these musicians. "Yes, and for that, I have to thank Johnny Gandelsman who is with us today," Yo-Yo adds. "Johnny had three homes growing up. He was born in Moscow, he lived in Israel and now he has moved to his third country: Brooklyn. More than that, I think he's one of the few musicians I know who has an ear for sort of the classics in classical music, for new music, for pop music, and he has an unbelievable ear. And he is an incredibly gentle and generous person and he is the producer of this album. He put it all together. And he actually allowed all of us to find the home that each person wanted to represent."
Johnny Gandelsman, a roving violinist with Brooklyn Rider and the Silk Road Ensemble, says the end result is an unusual collective of artists. "Yo-Yo often says something that stuck with me, which is that when he's performing, what people see is kind of the tip of the iceberg of who he is as a human being. And it's very true with members of our group that when we're on stage, the audience often gets a small percentage of who they are. So the focus of this album was to go more in-depth into the individual stories of our ensemble members. So many of the tracks are written by or arranged by Silk Road Ensemble members. So it was really great to put together the track list which felt special to the members of the group and then it's kind of like a kid in the candy store to have the possibility to say, well, we're going to record this song, who would you like to invite?"
"I think Johnny's secret is that he gives great parties," Yo-Yo Ma chimes in. "And this whole album is really about having a fabulous party … it's like who would you like to invite to the party and what night and that's what we did."
It made me wonder what rehearsals were like; I suppose it depends on who's invited to the party on any given night.
"Absolutely," Johnny says. "You can imagine that scheduling the recording of an album like this is very complicated. In the case of Toumani Diabate, who is one of my musical heroes who is the master of the kora, the African harp from Mali, Toumani was really excited to work with us on this album but he is in Mali and he was not traveling to the U.S. any time soon. So we recorded the track without him, sent him the track and then you know a little flash drive showed up in my mail from Mali through Paris with Toumani's playing on it. That was like one of those moments where I was super excited and a little bit nervous but the result turned out to be really beautiful."
And Abigail Washburn is on this recording singing in Chinese. That's pretty phenomenal.
"I mean, Abby has a very, very special story," Johnny explains. "Being someone who has been traveling to China for many years now and who started playing banjo as a way to bring something of American culture to China. I mean, that was her path to being a full time musician and she is such an incredible woman - she is an amazing performer and one of my personal goals was to see Abby and Wu Tong do a duet on this album. And Wu Tong being one of the great musicians from China who is both trained classically and also has a life as a rock star. And is very much involved in folk music. So wanted to bring Wu Tong and Abby together and an idea came up to do Goin' Home. And Goin' Home itself has a really interesting history, the melody being the theme from Dvorak's New World Symphony. And then that melody was set to lyrics by William Fischer and became sort of an incredibly well known spiritual in this country. And to have Abby sing in Chinese and Wu Tong to sing in English as well - that's a first, too. So that's a very special track."
Johnny, you represent home with, "Heart and Soul." Will you share that story?
"I was in a hotel room somewhere in the Midwest, watching TV after a concert … and the movie Big came on. And I was watching this movie and I saw this scene with Tom Hanks dancing on the floor piano, dancing to 'Heart and Soul.' And I had this memory of moving to Israel - my family moved to Israel when I was 12, in 1990. My first day of 7th grade, I didn't know anybody. And before school started I walked into the classroom and there was an upright piano and it was completely surrounded by kids who were banging out 'Heart and Soul,' and many were playing the tune on the other side of the piano. And I just thought, isn't that funny that this song is something that millions of kids and millions of people who love the piano - it might be one of the very first tunes they learn literally around the world. And then we were so lucky to have Lisa Fischer and Gregory Porter join us for a beautiful duet."
Yo-Yo, I was thinking about how there are so many pieces on the album and each of the composers is telling their story of home. What's your story of home that we hear on this recording?
"My story of home is the whole recording because I feel so grateful, actually, that through my great friends in the ensemble that they've introduced me to new worlds and to new friends," Yo-Yo says, "and so for me, the Silk Road Ensemble is very much a creative home. It's a spiritual, artistic home where good things happen. And this is I think one of the really good things that have happened: We now end concerts with Kinan playing the Wedding Song, and he's from Syria and he dedicates this to all the people who fell in love during this time. Now, how powerful is that? Because falling in love, no matter how horrible the situation, is still one of the most human things we can do, a human right, a human privilege. So over and over again I'm taken into these worlds and made to feel welcome. That's my home."

On June 6, Darlene Love hosted a special New York screening of Orchard's documentary "The Music of Strangers." The premiere was held at NYC's City Cinemas 123 and an after-party followed at Lotus Club where guests were treated to a special performance by the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. Gaby Hoffman, Brooke Baldwin, Alan Alda and Clive Davis were a few of the other notables in attendance. Blending performance footage, personal interviews, and archival film, director Morgan Neville ("20 Feet From Stardom") and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the personal journeys of a small group of Silk Road Ensemble mainstays: Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Kayhan Kalhor (Iran), Yo-Yo Ma (France/United States), Wu Man (China), and Cristina Pato (Spain) to chronicle passion, talent, and sacrifice.
READ THE FULL examiner.com ARTICLE

The latest album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble - Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated group. Available from Sony Masterworks, Sing Me Home is a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June.
In light of his latest album and a documentary that focuses on his work, the virtuoso cellist talks about his greatest fears, real-life heroes, and his own personal motto. READ THE ARTICLE

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has long been one of the country's most celebrated interpreters of classical music, but for the last two decades his Silk Road Ensemble has used music to build bridges across cultures. The latest recording from the always-rotating cast of master musicians is Sing Me Home, the companion album to a new documentary about the group called The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble. The record is tinctured with sounds from Ireland, The Balkan Peninsula, East Asia, the American South, India, Mali, and beyond. Click the player above to hear Yo-Yo Ma, banjo star Abigail Washburn (singing in Mandarin!), and members of The Silk Road Ensemble perform in the Soundcheck studio.
VIEW WNYC: Soundcheck PAGE

Here's an interesting irony about Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project that's lightly acknowledged in The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. The legendary cellist's attempt to create a broad-minded, forward-thinking cultural exchange through music has led some of the members of the ensemble to see themselves as gatekeepers of a past that's increasingly threatened to be lost forever. This is especially so in the case of pipa player Wu Man and the gaita-slaying Cristina Pato. For Wu, upon returning to China after her experiences with Ma's ensemble, she realized how much of her home country's folk music was disappearing, and decided to make it her mission to try to document it all. In Pato's case, seeing a similar erosion of the Galician cultural identity, she founded the Galician Connection, a festival intended as a celebration of the culture. As Winston Churchill famously said, "The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
READ THE FULL SLANT ARTICLE

It's a string thing this time in the Global Village, highlighting some world violin and cello artists and groups including - June featured artists: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble,
With guest performers and imaginative sounds that transform the traditional musical landscape - the new album - Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and its founding member and guiding light Yo-Yo Ma. Available from Sony Masterworks, Sing Me Home is a companion developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
Here's music from Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou-Khalil, who composed for the Ensemble. The show also contains highlights music from the new studio release, Culcha Vulcha, from Snarky Puppy SEE THE Global Village PAGE

Cellist YO-YO MA is probably the most recognized classical musician in the world. He's recorded 90 albums, 18 of which are Grammy winners. Ma has performed for a number of Presidents, including for John F. Kennedy when Ma was just 7 years old, and at President Obama's inauguration in 2008. In addition to his classical performances, Yo-Yo Ma has always found inspiration in diverse musical collaborations. In 1998 he founded the Silk Road Project, a cross-cultural music collective of artists from around the world. Now there's a new film tracing this musical venture, The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville. Marty talks with Ma about the Silk Road Ensemble and making music with an eclectic band of musicians and instruments. Then, Philadelphia Orchestra's music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin just accepted a job with the Metropolitan Opera although he'll remain with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer PETER DOBRIN fills us in on the news.
WHYY RADIO TIMES will air an interview hosted by Marty Moss-Coane in conversation with Yo-Yo Ma on behalf of - THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS This will air on: Monday, June 6th at 11:00 AM EST on 90.9 FM Philadelphia. LISTEN LIVE
http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2016/06/06/yo-yo-ma-on-the-silk-road-ensemble-music-critic-peter-dobrin/#sthash.XgU2Ru88.dpuf

One of the world's most beloved classical musicians, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and acclaimed film director Morgan Neville will join NPR Music Tuesday, June 7 at 6 p.m. ET for a special live event in advance of the theatrical release of the new documentary film, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. The event will take place at the HBO Screening Room at 1100 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. The evening will feature a musical introduction by Ma - the winner of 18 Grammy Awards - and a screening of the documentary, followed by a Q&A with its director, Morgan Neville, and NPR Music reporter Anastasia Tsioulcas.
READ THE FULL NPR ARTICLE

Whether as a means to showcase his diversity, or perhaps a distraction from the occasionally stoic nature of the concert hall, cellist Yo Yo Ma founded "The Silk Road Ensemble" years ago and it's been a virtual goodwill mission for players and fans worldwide ever since. As the group name suggests, their mission is to forge a trail for musical journeys of all types. Every so often, a non-jazz recording makes its way across my desk. Not as frequently, I am tempted to feature nearly all the works, regardless of format. Such a recording is Sing Me Home. As it happens, there are several tracks that more than fit the jazz niche.
READ THE FULL Jazz Police REVIEW

From the director of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom; The Music of Strangers, tells the extraordinary story of the renowned international musical collective created by legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The feature-length documentary follows The Silk Road Ensemble -- a group of diverse instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers -- as they explore the power of music to preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution and inspire hope. The Music of Strangers is the Berkshire International Film Festival's opening night film at The Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, MA on June 2nd at 7 p.m. Yo-Yo Ma will participate in a Q&A following the film.
LISTEN TO THE Northeast Public Radio SEGMENT

World fusion took on classical dimensions when Yo-Yo Ma formed his acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble. He brought together musicians and composers from around the world to create a new dialogue in a hybrid cultural sound. The Silk Road Ensemble is in its 16th year and its music horizons just keep getting broader. Their new album, Sing Me Home features guest performances by guitarist Bill Frisell, banjoist Abigail Washburn, and African kora players Toumani Diabate and Balla Kouyate among eight others from around the world. In addition, there is a new documentary, The Music Of Strangers directed by Morgan Neville who won an Oscar for his film, 20 Feet From Stardom. We get a few feet from a different kind of stardom with Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Johny Gandelsman And Wu Man Of The Silk Road Ensemble. John DiLiberto talks with Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble.
Echoes is on different stations, on different days and different times. You can listen locally or stream-live from our their various stations' websites.

Sing Me Home, the latest album produced by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, is a veritable smorgasbord of sounds – a feast for the ears. The record, released in April, runs an unprecedented cultural gamut, drawing from a host of ethnic and regional traditions to create novel, multivalent melodies. On the album, reimagined American standards, including "St. James Infirmary Blues," complement West African tribal music, and ethereal Chinese song is juxtaposed with frenetic Irish fiddling. This profound diversity is characteristic not only of the album, but also of those responsible for its creation, artists who take great pride in their ability to find unity among their mutual differences, and to humbly open themselves up to cultures outside their own.
READ THE FULL Smithsonian.com ARTICLE & WATCH VIDEO

Yo-Yo Ma was by age 30 widely regarded as one of the world's finest classical cellists, both onstage and in the studio. Then he branched out-to bluegrass, tango, jazz, and other genres and also projects with filmmakers, artists, and designers. The Music of Strangers, a documentary on the Silk Road Ensemble, a group he formed in 2000 to showcase composers and performers from around the world, will be released this month. The companion album - Sing Me Home transforms the traditional musical landscape and was developed alongside the documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville.
READ THE FULL Q&A

Mind Your Body with Stephanie Stephens features celebrities and high achievers age 45+ who share their latest projects, healthy living secrets and more.
When you think "cello," chances are you next think of Yo-Yo Ma. Born to Chinese parents in Paris in 1955, he began playing the stringed instrument at age 4, no small feat considering the size of a cello and the size of a young boy. Now he plays two cellos for legions of adoring fans: a 1733 Montagnana from Venice and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
Yo-Yo founded the nonprofit Silk Road Project in 2000. He says it is, among other descriptions, "the collective of rooted explorers, inclusive independents, storytelling musicians, passionate learners, connected nomads, and cultural entrepreneurs." It's also affiliated with Harvard.
With 18 Grammy Awards to his credit, a Kennedy Center Honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom and a slew of other outstanding accolades, you might wonder what's left for him to accomplish. From his perspective, there's plenty. He is at once introspective yet open, humble, inquisitive and never short on lively discussion on a wide variety of topics that interest him-and there are many.
Ma's new Sony album with the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble-Sing Me Home is co-produced by Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy winner Kevin Killen. Many of the group's members are immigrants, and the music pays tribute to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, Syria and the United States, as well as people of the Roma. Guest artists including Abigail Washburn, Lisa Fischer, Rhiannon Giddens, Bill Frisell and others. The album partners with a new documentary from Oscar and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo-Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble. See it in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on June 10, and see the trailer here. To see Yo-Yo Ma on tour now, check out this schedule.
READ THE Q&A

The latest album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated group and available on Sony Music Masterworks. Sing Me Homeis a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June.
Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
Huffington Post - Mike Ragona sat down with Yo-Yo Ma for an interview. READ THE PIECE

Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble have been forging unexpected connections for 16 years. To innovate presupposes a predilection for risk-taking, and Yo-Yo Ma has never been slow to venture towards the edges. This collection teases out the intricacies of that thing we call home with chutzpah. The familiar takes on a fresh spectrum of colour, as Martin Hayes' O'Neill's Cavalry March is rendered anew, through the accompaniment of the kamancheh, an Iranian bowed, string instrument and shakuhachi, a Japanese flute. A Tuareg song, Ichichila sways beneath the balafon of Balla Kouyaté and Toumani Diabaté's kora. The biggest surprise is Gregory Porter and Lisa Fischer's duet on Hoagy Carmichael'sHeart and Soul. Surprises lurk at every hairpin bend. A sheer delight.
SEE THE Irish Times PAGE & WATCH THE VIDEO

Yo-Yo Ma doesn't wait for musicians to come collaborate with him. He sends scouts around the world to find them. The result? The Silk Road Ensemble, Ma's collective that promotes collaboration between artists from across cultures, disciplines and generations. The ensemble is profiled in the new documentary, "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble." The film opens in theaters starting June 10. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. It's directed by Morgan Neville, who is also behind the Oscar-winning documentary "20 Feet From Stardom."
The Music of Strangers tells the story of the ensemble, which Ma started in 2000 as a way to connect artists from around the world. Today, the group performs and records music together, but also develops educational programs and facilitates connections between artists and organizations. "I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Ma says. "I'm surrounded by unbelievably great human beings, who also happen to be joyous and unbelievably talented. It's a crazy combination."
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VIEW Northwest Public Television PAGE
SEE WUNC POST

The potential buyer encountering this release by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble is apt to form several mistaken impressions of its contents. From the track list and accompanying description you will learn that it is "the companion album to the Morgan Neville documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble." And the long list of "featured" artists suggests the type of lazy, all-star album famous artists tend to phone in during the later stages of their careers. Neither of these impressions corresponds with the considerable riches here. The music is entirely effective independently of the little-publicized film. And, more importantly, the real "featured artists" here are not the named stars (who skew toward younger members of the new acoustic scene like bluegrasser Sarah Jarosz), but the members of the Silk Road Ensemble themselves. The structure of the album, as with so many of the creations of these remarkable artists, is unique. The Silk Road members, and a few visitors, select music of personal significance to them, many of them related in a general way to the theme of home. Then, a guest musician with skills appropriate to the music was added. With a range of source material running from Heart and Soul to Mali to the Balkans to East Asia, the resulting fusions are never less than interesting and are often marvelous. Sample the much-recorded St. James Infirmary Blues (track 11) in its unique realization here with accordionist Michael Ward Bergeman (one of the guest Silk Roaders), Chinese yangqin player Reylon Yount, and the wonderful blues-country vocalist Rhiannon Giddens, a border crosser herself. The album gives insights into the histories of the Silk Road players, and indeed into the musical and personal depth that has made this ensemble one for the ages, and its leader a true musical exemplar of our time.
SEE THE allmusic PAGE

Pac-Arts and the San Diego Asian Film Festival host the annual Spring Showcase April 28 through May 5 at the UltraStar Mission Valley. Spring Showcase kicks off on an upbeat note with the documentary "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble." The film is directed by Morgan Neville who won an Oscar for another musical documentary, "Twenty Feet From Stardom." This time around Neville looks to cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his project to bring musicians from along the famous trade route together. The film looks to the role music plays and to creating unexpected connections. Festival programmer Brian Hu said for the opening night screening in San Diego, Pac-Arts is bringing in local musicians "to give some of the instruments in the film a local dimension."
LISTEN TO THE KPBS SEGMENT
SEE Times of San Diego - Weekend Guide:

The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June. Sing Me Home, the latest album by Ma and the Ensemble is a companion, developed and recorded alongside the film.
The sixth album for the group and its founding member and guiding light Yo-Yo Ma - available from Sony Music Masterworks The album was produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), and examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
Watch this Wall Street Journal - Film Trailer for 'The Music of Strangers'

The 2016 Summer Movie Preview is a snapshot of the films opening through early September. Release dates and other details, as compiled by Kevin Crust, are subject to change. Featured in this Preview is:
The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville profiles the international collective created by world-class cellist Ma. Sing Me Home, the latest album is the sixth by the Grammy-nominated Ensemble.
Available from Sony Music Masterwork, Sing Me Home is a companion to the film, developed and recorded alongside. Produced by ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists.
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Sony Music Masterworks release Sing Me Home TODAY, the latest album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. This exciting recording features several guest performers including Abigail Washburn, Bill Frisell, Gregory Porter, Lisa Fischer, Rhiannon Giddens, Sarah Jarosz and several more international icons and virtuosos. It is the companion album developed and recorded alongside the new Morgan Neville documentary titled The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble which is slated for theatrical release in June 2016.
The recording examines the ever-changing concept of home, with original and traditional songs composed, arranged and performed by members of the Silk Road Ensemble. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen, the recording's 13 tracks reflect the boundless creativity of the individual members of the Ensemble as well as the diverse contributions of the guest artists. Yo-Yo Ma plays cello on 9 songs and beautifully makes it possible for us to discover so many different musical traditions.
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In 1962, a very young Yo-Yo Ma walked on stage in a suit and tie to play one of his first high-profile concerts-for President John F. Kennedy. "Here's a cultural image for you to ponder as you listen," conductor Leonard Bernstein told the crowd. "A seven-year-old Chinese cellist playing old French music for his new American compatriots." This, Bernstein said, was a perfect example of the "double stream of art...flowing into and out of America." More than 50 years later, Ma-who was born to Chinese parents in Paris and moved to the United States at age seven-has racked up 17 Grammys, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a National Medal of the Arts. Many view him as the world's greatest cellist, maybe ever.
Yet in some ways little has changed. Ma, who calls himself a "cultural citizen," continues to exemplify the melting pot Bernstein described all those years ago. In 2000, he formed the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of musicians and composers from more than 20 countries, as a "lab" that creates works from a variety of traditions. Sing Me Home, the group's new album, out this week, explores the concept of "home" through myriad genres, from Irish marches to Malian folks songs. To celebrate the occasion, I caught up with Ma to discuss creativity, stage fright, and his lifelong love of...the double bass.
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Here are the 2 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviews
Rufus Wainwright, "Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets" (Deutsch Grammophon). Ever-eccentric scion of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle recruits Helena Bonham Carter, William Shatner and Florence Welch - to name but three - to give the words of Shakespeare their poetic due as Wainwright supplies classical and pop backing.
Yo-Yo Ma & Silk Road Ensemble, "Sing Me Home" (Sony Masterworks). A companion piece to a documentary coming out in the summer, this album features the SRE and the highly acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma along with Sarah Jarosz, Rhiannon Giddens, Gregory Porter and more, all pondering the idea of "home" around the globe.

Two major film festivals coming up in San Francisco offer lots of music and dance. The 59th S.F. International Film Festival runs April 21–May 5, and the 21st S.F. Silent Film Festival, June 2–5. The International Festival has moved from the Sundance Kabuki Cinema in Japantown to the spectacular new Alamo Drafthouse Mission Theater and restaurant complex for the first time. Yo Yo Ma and Silk Road featured in The Music of Strangers (Morgan Neville, US, 2015), will play at 6:30 p.m., May 3, New Mission; 4 p.m., May 5, BAMPFA.
Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble, initially drawn from the Central Asian "Silk Road" countries and regions of China, India, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula includes talents from all over the globe. Footage from the film includes scenes from Ma's career, including his performance as a seven-year-old prodigy in the White House, as well as the backstories of such ensemble members as Damascus-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh; Iranian exile and acclaimed kamancheh player, Kayhan Kalhor; Wu Man, master of the Chinese stringed instrument, the pipa; and Spanish bagpiper Cristina Pato, known as "the Jimi Hendrix of Galicia."
SEE A LIST OF ALL FILMS AT San Francisco Classical Voice

The international music documentary film competition, DocFilmMusic, will be held for the fourth time within the frames of Krakow Film Festival, and this year's edition will prove, once again, that music is an inexhaustible source of film topics which are a feast for ears and eyes. The best music documentary films from the entire world will compete in front of the audience in Krakow for the prestigious award: the Golden Heynal. The Krakow Film Festival is one of the oldest film events dedicated to documentary, animated and short fiction films in Europe. During 8 festival days viewers have an opportunity to watch about 250 films from Poland and abroad. Films are presented in competitions and in special sections like retrospectives, thematic cycles, archive screenings. Festival is accompanied by exhibitions, concerts, open air screenings and meetings with the filmmakers. Every year Krakow Film Festival hosts about 600 Polish and international guests: directors, producers, film festival programmers and numerous audience from Krakow.
The multi-cultural project Yo-Yo Ma ("The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Man and the Silk Road Ensemble"), is in the competition, as there is a place both for music discoveries and nostalgic travels in time - from jazz, through rock and hip hop, to ethnic music and Latino rhythms. Once again, it turns out that music documentary films tell the story of something more than just the music itself.
The CD companion to Music of Strangers - Sing Me Home: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble will release later this month.
With guest performers and imaginative sounds that transform the traditional musical landscape, Sing Me Home is the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated group available from Sony Music Masterworks. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States.
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World renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will release his latest album "Sing Me Home" on April 22. The album includes performances by Ma the Silk Road Ensemble and is the musical companion to the documentary film "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble" that tells the story of the ensemble and will be released in theaters in June. Produced by Kevin Killen and ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman, the album explores the "ever-changing idea of home" Sony Music said in a press release. The music includes original and traditional arrangements by the global artists that are part of the ensemble.
Composers of each song explored the concept of the "music of home" using their unique experiences and heritage from the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States. "Throughout the Silk Road Ensemble's travels and performances, we have come to understand the wealth of creative potential that exists when cultures intersect," Yo-Yo Ma said through a press release. "The music composed, arranged, and performed by Ensemble members for Sing Me Home demonstrates the power of curiosity, evolving tradition, and cultural exchange."
In one example, guest performer Rhiannon Giddens channels music of the Roma people in the American folk tune "St. James Infirmary Blues." In another song, guitarist Bill Frisell plays along sice music from a shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and a tabla (Indian drum). Singer Sarah Jarosz pays homage to the late Pete Seeger in an arrangement of "Little Birdie," featuring the pipa (Chinese lute) and the sheng (Chinese mouth organ). The song "Going Home" reinvents the Dvořák's "New World" symphony in both Chinese and English by vocalist and banjo player Abigail Washburn and ensemble member Wu Tong.
Ma founded the nonprofit Silkroad in 1998. Since 2000, the ensemble has welcomed more than 70 performers and composers from nearly 25 nations. "Every tradition is the result of successful invention," Ma said in the soon-to-be released documentary. "Human beings grow by being curious and receptive to what's around them. A lot of people are scared of change, and sometimes there's reason to be fearful. But if you can welcome change, you become fertile ground for development."
Watch a sneak peek here of "Going Home," a duet sung in Chinese and English by Silk Road Ensemble member, Wu Tong, and Grammy-winning folk singer Abigail Washburn.

In anticipation of - Sing Me Home, the sixth album by the Grammy-nominated Silk Road Ensemble and its founding member and guiding light Yo-Yo Ma - available from Sony Music Masterworks on April 22, 2015, celebrate with KUAF - Fayetteville AR on Tuesday's - Of Note program.
Sing Me Home is a companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June. Produced by Silk Road Ensemble member Johnny Gandelsman and Grammy Award winner Kevin Killen (U2, Kate Bush, Elvis Castello, David Bowie), the album examines the ever-changing idea of home, with original and traditional tunes composed or arranged by members of the Ensemble's unique collective of global artists. Each piece invites listeners to explore the "music of home" through the individual experiences of Ensemble members, many of whom are immigrants. The result is a compelling collection of innovative and deeply moving tributes to the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans, China, Galicia, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mali, people of the Roma, Syria, and the United States. SEE THE KUAF - Fayetteville AR PAGE

In the very first shot of "The Music of Strangers" we see internationally acclaimed musician Yo-Yo Ma enter a room with his instrument, then look at the camera and say, "This is my cello. Have you ever seen one before?" Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville's film then continues to weave the stories of the members of the Silk Road Ensemble - a band of musicians from around the globe started by Yo-Yo Ma - together in a beautiful way that examines the role of music and the arts alongside identity, conflict and tragedy.
The documentary profiles several of the Silk Road Ensemble musicians, who went through their own incredible journey of mastering an instrument, travelling abroad and hoping to find out their role in the world. "The Music of Strangers" is about more than music; it's about the human condition. It's about how one continues life after tragedy, how one defines "home" and how one determines their own cultural identity. READ THE FULL Maneater ARTICLE. WATCH The Music of Strangers TRAILER

The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a citizen artist and a forensic musicologist, decoding the work of musical creators across time and space. In his art, Yo-Yo Ma resists fixed boundaries, and would like to rename classical music just "music" - born in improvisation, and traversing territory as vast and fluid as the world we inhabit. In this generous and intimate conversation, he shares his philosophy of curiosity about life, and of performance as hospitality.
The latest album by Ma is with the Silk Road Ensemble. Titled Sing Me Home, it is the companion album, developed and recorded alongside The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a documentary feature from Oscar® and Emmy-winning director Morgan Neville that tells the story of the Ensemble and Silkroad, its parent organization. The Music of Strangers is slated for theatrical release in June.
READ THE On Being TRANSCRIPT & LISTEN TO THE SEGMENT

The legendary cellist brought the talented solo artist and former member of Carolina Chocolate Drops on board for a project with the Silk Road Ensemble, a multi-national group of composers and performers Ma formed in 2000. The ensemble just readied a new album, Sing Me Home, featuring Giddens on the popular American folksong "St. James Infirmary Blues," which we're happy to premiere. Other guests on the album, out April 22, include Bill Frisell, Sarah Jarosz, and Gregory Porter.
"Music is one of the best ways human beings have to code memory and often, at Silk Road, it's also the way we code friendships," Ma says. ""What an amazing session with the Silk Road Ensemble!" Giddens adds. "I was so honored to get to sing with these fabulous musicians, and you can tell we are all having a great time!" Listen to "St. James Infirmary Blues" and pre-order Sing Me Home here.
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Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble played to two consecutive sold out crowds in the Granada Theatre on Sunday and Monday night. The backdrop transitioned from blue to amber behind dozens of speakers stacked up, as if prepared for a rock show. But the music seemed to emanate directly from the instruments themselves. Kayhan Kalhor, an internationally known musician, slowly began playing the kamancheh, an Iranian stringed instrument. After four minutes of solo play, more than 20 members of the ensemble picked up their violins, clarinets and bass, adding to Kalhor's skillful strumming.
Ma was the last person to begin playing, and while many of those in the audience likely came to see him, it was members of the ensemble who were front and center for much of the night. Hundreds of heads stood still as they fixated on Ma's masterful playing, his eyes closed, his hand viciously sliding his bow back and forth on the cello. The Silk Road Ensemble is releasing a new album, Sing Me Home, on April 22. READ THE FULL Daily Nexus REVIEW

After meeting world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and succumbing to his charm, documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville set out to document his ensemble of musicians from around the world, playing traditional instruments of their home countries, and morphing all these different traditions together to make something entirely new. Yo-Yo Ma's charm is hard not to succumb to, and Neville's storytelling is as light-footed, smooth and masterful as in his previous documentaries, like the wonderful 20 Feet from Stardom, focusing on background singers.
This time, he focuses on protagonists from places where traditional music is not appreciated any more, countries who have had a cultural revolution: China, Iran, and Syria. Following these gifted musicians for several years, it is heartbreaking to see their anxiety grow with regards to their homelands. Kayhan Kalhor plays the traditional Persian Kamancheh, he is one of the best players in the world. But he is not allowed to perform in Iran. Kinan Azmeh, Syrian clarinetist, has lost the motivation to compose music, feeling its pointlessness and his own powerlessness in the face of what his compatriots have to go through. The Music of Strangers carries the powerful message the Silk Road Ensemble has been founded upon.
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An unlikely band of collaborators teams with Yo-Yo Ma to encourage cross-cultural connectivity. A first-rate music film capturing a restless desire to communicate beyond the boundaries of any single idiom, The Music of Strangers watches as Yo-Yo Ma, a giant in the world of Western classical music, puts Bach and Beethoven aside to spend time with his multicultural Silk Road Ensemble. Documentarian Morgan Neville is on quite a roll here, debuting two films at TIFF while his widely praised Best of Enemies still lingers in theatrical release. Though this picture doesn't have the element of discovery that made his Twenty Feet from Stardom a box-office hit and Oscar-winner, it will play very well on HBO and is a rich enough experience to benefit from big-screen bookings.
Many viewers will be surprised to hear the cellist speak of never having really committed to music, of having simply "fallen into" the career because his gifts were so obvious in childhood. (We see footage of Leonard Bernsteinintroducing the prodigy on TV at age 7.) Friend John Williams observes that, for a wunderkind, the challenge is finding ways to keep one's interest up, and early in Ma's career he began addressing that question, teaming with everyone from Hot Club legend Stephane Grappelli to the acrobatic vocalistBobby McFerrin in his search for what Bernstein called a universal musical language.
READ THE FULL Hollywood Reporter ARTICLE
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EXCLUSIVE: The Toronto Film Festival commences today and Deadline has a clip from Oscar winner Morgan Neville's (20 Feet From Stardom) documentary The Music Of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma And The Silk Road Ensemble. The docu is set to premiere as part of TIFF Docs on Sunday and follows acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma as he sets out to create a wholly international music collective though his group, The Silk Road Ensemble. The group of master musicians from diverse countries was formed to collaborate, educate, and connect with people beyond their geographic scope.
The project took on greater meaning after September 11, 2001 as a way to foster dialogue across cultures. Although a seemingly daunting task, the audience will see the palpable results of the ensembles efforts: The clip features a jam session with Ma; Galicia's Cristina Pato, known as the Jimi Hendrix of gaita bagpipes; Iran's Kayhan Kalhor, a master of the kamancheh fiddle; and China's Wu Man, a virtuoso on the lute-like pipa. The documentary is exec produced by Diane Weyermann, Laura Freid, Jeff Skoll, Cristin Canterbury Bagnall, and Julie Goldman with Caitrin Rogers serving a producer.
Along with The Music Of Strangers, Neville's Keith Richards: Under The Influence, will also be world premiering at the fest with a Netflix release to follow.
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We are getting old," sighed cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the start of the concert by the Silk Road Ensemble Friday night at Chicago's Symphony Center. A stop as part of their 15th anniversary tour, the group showcased their cross-cultural spectacle of Asian, Near Eastern and Western music and instruments, sometimes presented in provocative new ways.
READ THE FULL Chicago Tribune REVIEW

When you hear Yo-Yo Ma play, it changes you. Not only is he the cello's leading interpreter of the great repertory, but when he plays the Dvorak concerto, or Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto, it becomes more than just great music. Through charisma, effortless technique and sheer enjoyment of the process, he transforms.
He's been transforming the nature of music-making as well, for 15 years now. His Silk Road Ensemble, bringing an anniversary concert to Symphony Hall for the Celebrity Series of Boston on March 4, has jolted the musical notions of eastern, western, classical, world and folk.
"Everything is being upended," he says, talking about the world, and not just about music. "Nowadays we don't have a philosophy that can hold all the ideas of culture together, and we've outpaced our ability to make sense of things. It's had some disastrous consequences. In a nanosecond economies can surge or flounder, in ways that are out of control."
READ THE FULL WBUR: Boston / Artery PIECE

This year, the celebrated Silk Road Ensemble with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will be celebrating their 15th anniversary with a tour to eight major Asian cities. From October 28 to November 10, 2014, the group will bring their innovative cross-cultural music to South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China.
"It is an honor for me to perform with the Silk Road Ensemble for friends both old and new in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China," said Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad Founder and Artistic Director. "My fellow performers and I look forward to sharing music that springs from the cherished traditions of these cultures, and our joy in working together at the place where they intersect. As we celebrate Silkroad's 15th anniversary, we are grateful for the continuing opportunity to show how music can connect us and enrich our humanityto share with you how much culture matters." READ THE FULL BroadwayWorld.com ARTICLE.

Since its founding in the 1940s, the Greater Bridgeport Symphony has enjoyed a reputation for hiring nationally and internationally renowned conductors/music directors to lead the ensemble. The venerable orchestra remained true to its history, announcing that its fifth music director and principal conductor Eric Jacobsen, of Brooklyn, N.Y. Described by the Los Angeles Times as someone "on a mission to help ensure the future of classical music in America," Mr. Jacobsenis also a founding member of Brooklyn Rider as well as a member one of the most esteemed groups in America: cellist Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble.Silk Road Ensemble. Check out The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: Live from Tanglewood" preview on this post, which premiered on PBS.

When you're lucky enough to have cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble, some of the world's premiere instrumentalists and composers, gather for an afternoon of offstage music making, you've got to think long and hard about where to put them. And NPR decided that the perfect match would be ACME Studio in Brooklyn.
NPR had so much fun taping cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble's Field Recording, we couldn't stop at just one selection, so we recorded the group's four talented percussionists in a deep groove.

Weaving together the legacies of traditional and contemporary musical ideas with searing spontaneity and superb craftsmanship, The Silk Road Ensemble offers an East-meets-West multicultural feast for the senses. With a totally unique and energetic flare, this collective of musicians, drawn from a group of 60 distinguished performers and composers from over 20 countries, performs with the central purpose to share and celebrate the music of the world. The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma play the Vancouver Playhouse TONIGHT!! Friday November 1st at 8pm.

Founded by Yo-Yo Ma, this innovative ensemble draws together distinguished musicians from more than twenty countries and has performed to critical acclaim throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Their most recent recording, Off the Map, was nominated for a Grammy in 2011. The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will perform at Weill Hall in Sonoma, CA TONIGHT!! Tuesday Oct. 29th@ 7:30pm.

"When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives," says Yo-Yo Ma about the Silk Road Project. For more than a decade, the beloved cellist and his colleagues have promoted the study of cultural, artistic, and intellectual traditions along the ancient trade route that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Returning to Zellerbach Hall, this is a collective of renowned performers and composers from more than 20 countries. Each member's career illustrates a moving response to the artistic challenge of our time: nourishing global connections while maintaining the integrity of art rooted in an authentic tradition.
The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma play Zellerbach Hall: Berkeley, CA TONIGHT!! Sunday Oct. 27th

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will perform at the Campbell Hall in Santa Barbara, CA TONIGHT!! Thursday Oct. 24th
The performance will start at 8pm.
The Silk Road Ensemble, a Grammy-nominated collective of performers from Asia, Europe and the Americas, combines superb musicianship with an eagerness to connect across cultures and musical traditions. Western string instrumentalists perform with folk percussionists and virtuosos of instruments like the gaita(Galician bagpipes), tabla (Indian hand drums), shakuhachi
(Japanese bamboo flute) and kamancheh (Persian bowed lute). The ensemble's lively concert features sumptuous traditional music alongside new work by composers the world over, such as Angel Lam's haunting Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain, which explores the universal mysteries of life, death and longing. Come delight in the fertile crossroads of musical culture. Featuring Kayhan Kalhor, Cristina Pato, Kojiro Umezaki, Sandeep Das and others.

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: A Playlist Without Borders is the groundbreaking group s fifth recording. The group came in last week while in town, and visited with John Schneider on Thursday Global Villiage.

SRE once again demonstrates that there are no barriers for those approaching music with an open mind. We knew we had to off this title for Fall 2013.

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will play at the Valley P.A.C. in Northridge, CA TONIGHT!! Tuesday Oct. 22nd
The performance will start at 7:30pm.
This evening's eclectic performance marks the 15th anniversary of artistic director Yo-Yo Ma's internationally minded non-profit arts, cultural and educational organization The Silk Road Project, which presents performances by the critically-acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble. The iconic performance group is a collective of internationally-renowned performers and composers from more than 20 countries who collaborate on a diverse range of musical and multimedia projects. The 60-member globetrotting ensemble has performed in 105 cities, 30 countries and recorded five albums, with its most recent release Off the Map being nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album in 2011. Join us for an exhilarating celebration where "Classical music making rarely achieves this combination of spontaneity and superb craftsmanship" - The Washington Post

The Silk Road Ensemble is touring the West Coast and conducting residencies at universities along the way. TONIGHT!! Sunday October 20, the ensemble plays the Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla, CA TONIGHT!! Sunday Oct. 20th. The performance will start at 6pm.

The famed musician Yo-Yo Ma discusses with the CBS This Morning co-hosts how he came to play the cello, what he remembers about playing for John F. Kennedy, the importance of creativity, and his new album with the Silk Road Ensemble: A Playlist Without Borders.
HERE'S THE CBS PIECE

Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble are in conversation with Charlie Rose TONIGHT, Thursday October 17@11:00p ET on PBS, to discuss amomg other things their new album is called 'A Playlist Without Borders.' The segment will be rebroadcast tomorrow, Friday 18th at 1:30p and also on Bloomberg TV at 8:00p and 10:00p ET.

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York, NY TONIGHT!! Wednesday Oct. 16th
The performance starts at 8pm.
Formed under the artistic direction of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of distinguished performers and composers from more than 20 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas who are dedicated to celebrating diverse musical traditions and developing a new multicultural repertoire. In celebration of its 15th anniversary, the innovative group returns to Carnegie Hall with a program of works from China, England, Italy, and the United States. Spanning more than a decade of music, previous commissions and new works by Vijay Iyer, John Zorn, and David Bruce are featured.

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma will perform at Wheaton College in Norton, MA TONIGHT!! Tuesday Oct. 15th
The performance starts at 8pm.
Formed under the artistic direction of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, The Silk Road Ensemble is a collective of musicians and artists from nearly 20 countries. In sharing traditions from various cultures, the Ensemble develops and performs new music and multimedia pieces, exploring and expanding contemporary musical crossroads. The Silk Road Ensemble has performed to critical acclaim throughout Asia, Europe and North America, and has recorded six albums; their album Off the Map, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album in 2011. The Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma are represented by Opus 3 Artists.

"When he reached middle age, I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick." - Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma began playing the cello at the age of 4. Now 57, he has received numerous Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1998 Mr. Ma founded the Silk Road Project, a nonprofit organization that brings together musicians from around the world. Last month, Sony Classical released his Silk Road Ensemble's "Playlist Without Borders" CD and "Live From Tanglewood" concert DVD. Mr. Ma recently called from his home in Cambridge, Mass.
READ THE New York Times PIECE

The Silk Road Project has been on a mission to promote innovation and cross-cultural understanding through the arts for the last 15 years. The newest chapter comes with the Sony Masterworks release TODAY!!, Tuesday September 24 of the new album A Playlist Without Borders from the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. This is the groundbreaking group's fifth recording and first since 2009's Grammy-nominated Off the Map. The deluxe edition includes the CD and a DVD, Live from Tanglewood, featuring live concert footage of two performances on June 22nd and 24th, 2012, at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, as well as insightful and intimate behind-the-scenes interviews with the musicians.
The vision of Yo-Yo Ma's limitless collective, the Silk Road Ensemble, is as timely as ever: to connect the world's neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences. From flashy surf guitar sounds to ninth century Chinese poetry, from modular playlists to Egyptian rhythms, the Silk Road Ensemble mixes the modern and the traditional, breaking boundaries of ethnicity and era. A Playlist Without Borders demonstrates once again that there are no barriers for those approaching music with an open mind.
Founded by Yo-Yo Ma during the Project's second year, the Silk Road Ensemble has featured more than 60 members from 24 countries. Hailed as "one of the 21st century's great ensembles" by the Vancouver Sun and described as "a kind of roving musical laboratory without walls" by the Boston Globe, the genre-defying Ensemble is a broad collective of musicians who honor the value of each member and the flexibility and creativity of the group.
Yo-Yo Ma notes, "The DVD Live from Tanglewood and CD A Playlist without Borders are perfect celebrations of the 15th anniversary of the Silk Road Project. I hope you can sense the joy of music making and the rich diversity and collaborative spirit of the Silk Road Ensemble. I'm delighted that the DVD and CD capture the friendships that have developed as we have explored the world and its traditions together."
"I think that there are not many ensembles that can share the musicianship that the Silk Road Ensemble does," says member Kayhan Kalhor, one of the great kamancheh players of today. "Everybody brings a lot of energy to the music, so it'sa continuing learning process that we all share."
The album opens with the eight-part "Playlist for an Extreme Occasion," composed by pianist Vijay Iyer. The title refers to the literary theorist and amateur classical pianist Edward W. Said's description of a classical performance - he asserted that an "extreme occasion" was experiencing music written and played with an expertise that select few ever achieve - as well as a the concept of modern-day playlist, which also is referenced in the album's title.
"I built this piece with that kind of modular format in mind," explains Iyer, "that any part of this could be spun off and you could do anything with it in the course of performance and let that be it's own thing. I'm not trying to force some sort of overarching narrative, but rather let that emerge from the accumulation of small ideas."
Iyer had written for all these instruments before, though never in this combination. He chose to highlight the way the tabla, the gaita and the sheng offered specific structural details to the work, and to push the envelope of what those instruments could do.
This sense of playful exploration also informs the four-part "Cut the Rug," written by noted classical composer David Bruce. Referring to both the Central Asian rug-making tradition as well as the Western phrase for dancing, this piece is a cycle of play-fight-die-rebirth. The dance-like first movement called "Drag the Goat" was inspired by the Central Asian horse-back sport called Buzkashi, a polo-like game that uses a headless goat carcass as the ball. The second movement, "Bury the Hatchet," is more confrontational in a formalized way that recalls flamenco or capoeira dancing. "Move the Earth" begins as an elegy before climaxing with a powerful gaita solo from Cristina Pato. The final movement, "Wake the Dead," strikes a lighter and more uplifting tone that closes the piece with a sense of rebirth.
"Often in my work I'm trying to explain to classically trained players how to play folk-like ornaments or styles of playing," Bruce recalls. "These all came so naturally to the Ensemble, of course, that I didn't have anything to say in that regard. It was nice writing a simple line, knowing it would be brought to life by some of the best players in the world."
This ensemble of world-class players also features several composers and arrangers in its midst. Percussionist Shane Shanahan wrote and arranged "Saidi Swing." This composition fuses the four-beat rhythmic figure common in the traditional Egyptian dance called Saidi with Shanahan's desireto "swing" out into uncharted territory on this piece, which also features tabla player Sandeep Das as well as percussionists Joseph Gramley and Mark Suter.
On "Night Thoughts," pipa player Wu Man used a ninth century Buddhist pipa melody and was further inspired by the famous poem "A Quiet Night Thought," written by Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai or Li Bo. "Since we have quite a few 'all-play' pieces, I deliberately kept this small combination of instruments," explains Wu Man. "It's a dialog between pipa, shakuhachi and jang-go, each with their unique sound color and, more importantly, representative of a common origin from the Buddhist music tradition."
A Playlist Without Borders also includes an elegant cello solo by Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, played by Ma, entitled "Allegretto from Partita, Op. 31" and the evocative and multifaceted "Atashgah" by Silk Road Ensemble violinist Colin Jacobsen. The album closes with the singular "Briel," written by avant-garde jazz icon John Zorn. The song's title refers to one of the Jewish angels invoked during childbirth to protect the newborn and its mother from harm and illness. Arranger and oud player Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz notes that "‘Briel' explores the similarities between the tradition of the oud and the surf guitar stylings of the 60's - in technique, sound, scale, and rhythm - like Fareed Al Atrash meets Dick Dale."
Like time-travelling merchants crossing the ancient Silk Road trade route, the Silk Road Ensemble trades in sounds and ideas. In both A Playlist Without Borders and Live from Tanglewood, the Ensemble's currency is music and its passport, an inquisitive mind.

Sneak Preview TONIGHT!!! Tuesday: September 24th at 6p of "The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: Live From Tanglewood" @ 550 Madison Avenue, 7th Floor ( 55th/56th ). The film features concert footage from the 2012 Tanglewood Festival plus behind-the-scenes interviews with the artists. Directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom). Yo-Yo Ma will make introductory remarks, and following the screening, Morgan Neville and members of the Silk Road Ensemble will be available for a Q&A.

The Silk Road Project has been on a mission to promote innovation and cross-cultural understanding through the arts for the last 15 years, and will celebrate the anniversary with the film's release as part of a special CD/DVD package of their new album: A Playlist Without Borders on September 24. This is the groundbreaking group's fifth recording and first since 2009's Grammy-nominated Off the Map. The deluxe edition includes the CD and a DVD, Live from Tanglewood, featuring live concert footage of two performances on June 22nd and 24th, 2012, at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, as well as insightful and intimate behind-the-scenes interviews with the musicians.

While many teachers used their summer vacations to relax and re-energize away from the classroom, two teachers from Hillcrest Academy in Temecula headed back to school - at Harvard University. Hillcrest teachers Lindy Liptak and Barbara Martin went to Harvard through grants awarded by the "Silk Road Project," an internationally minded, nonprofit arts, cultural and educational organization that promotes innovation and learning through the arts. The two were selected to travel to the Harvard Graduate School of Education from August 7 through 9 for a seminar entitled "Arts and Passion-driven Learning."
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The Album Documents and Celebrates A Yearlong, Multi-National Voyage of Discovery In Chicago
"We struck the home trail now, and in a few hours were in that astonishing Chicago-a city where they are always rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities..."
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883
New Impossibilities, a new live recording by Sony Classical featuring multiple-Grammy-Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Ensemble, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, will be released on July 31. The recording is the result of "Silk Road Chicago," the first city-wide year-long residency spearheaded by the Silk Road Project, the organization founded by Ma as a catalyst for promoting innovation and learning through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary partnerships. The Silk Road Project partnered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Chicago Office of Tourism from June 2006 to June 2007 in a program of exhibitions, concerts, workshops, readings, films, dance performances and educational events. The new recording captures some of the concert highlights of Silk Road Chicago.
On April 15 and 20, 2007, Ma and the Ensemble interpreted tradition-based and/or newly composed works inspired by the historic splendors of the Silk Road. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra joined them on April 12, 13 and 17 for the world premiere of Ambush From Ten Sides for Pipa, Sheng, Guitar, Cello and Orchestra, an orchestral suite which depicts the fierce battle between the kingdoms of Han and Chu that led to the founding of the Han Dynasty. The title New Impossibilities refers to Mark Twain's description in Life on the Mississippi of the bracing energy and wide-open embrace of diversity that has always characterized the great city of Chicago and its people. It also reflects the Silk Road Project's vision of connecting the world's neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences around the globe.
When Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Project in 1998, even he could not have imagined its eventual impact. Like the ancient pan-Asian trade route for which it was named, the Project links the East and West. But rather than spices, carpets and rich fabrics, the Silk Road Project showcases the equally intricate beauty of several centuries-worth of single and intersecting arts traditions. Meanwhile, the Silk Road Ensemble has explored folkloric and classical music styles from Iran, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan, India and Turkey and new Silk Road Project-commissioned works by emerging composers from the above and other nations. Through nearly a decade of warmly inclusive adventures, Ma and his team of legendary virtuosi have charmed audiences of all ages and backgrounds, demystifying unfamiliar and sometimes enigmatic cultures and creating opportunities for positive face-to-face encounters during an era that sorely needs them.
The present disc commences with Rabih Abou-Khalil's Arabian Waltz, a sexy, poly-rhythmic piece that gives the Ensemble's string players, including a Persian kamancheh spike fiddle and a plucked Chinese pipa, plus a Japanese shakuhachi flute, a vigorous workout. Next is the Night of the Flying Horses. Composed by Osvaldo Golijov, the three movements are redolent of Eastern European and Roma (Gypsy) themes and feature the shakuhachi and sheng, a Chinese mouth organ. Hai-Hai Huang's Galloping Horses is a merrily witty sonic picture of Mongolian wild steeds on the move, with solos for pipa and double bass. Track four, the muscularly atonal, impressionistic Song of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets, was composed by Chinese-born Zhou Long, who is now based in the USA. Kayhan Kalhor is a renowned exponent of the kamancheh and a noted composer. His The Silent City, scored for strings and percussion, is an elegy for the town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was destroyed in 1988. Shristi, a work by famed tabla (Indian tuned frame drum) master Sandeep Das, depicts the Hindu god Shiva Nataraj and his drum in the act of creating the universe. On the world premiere of Ambush From Ten Sides, a Chinese traditional melody is arranged by Li Cang Sang and China Magpie into six sweepingly cinematic visions of war and its aftermath. The album concludes with Vocussion, a Silk Road audience favorite in which the five Ensemble members who created it explode into vocal percussion effects.
The Silk Road Project is featured on Sony Classical's Web site at www.sonybmgmasterworks.comand on Yo-Yo Ma's artist domain at www.Yo-YoMa.com. Additional information -- such as background on the performers and their instruments, plus concert schedules -- can be found on the Silk Road Project Web site atwww.silkroadproject.org.

An Intimate Journey through the music of Yo-Yo Ma, the popular podcast series featuring interviews with him discussing his life and career, continues with exclusive interviews with members of the Silk Road Ensemble as they discuss the recording of New Impossibilities. The podcast can be accessed via the podcast section of Mr. Ma's official website, http://www.yo-yoma.com.

Now in the fifth year of their internationally acclaimed collaboration, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble continue to explore the musical cultures that flourished along the Silk Road – the ancient trade route between China and the West – with their latest recording for Sony Classical, entitled Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon. The recording will be released just as the performers embark on a brief tour of major U.S. cities. Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon will be released on Tuesday, April 5, 2005.
Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble will perform in Boston at Symphony Hall on April 6; in Chicago at Orchestra Hall on April 8; in New York at Carnegie Hall on April 10; in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center on April 11; and in Philadelphia at the Kimmel Center on April 12.
The music for Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon was created in the fall of 2004, to be heard on the soundtrack of a television series about the Silk Road created by the Japanese network NHK. To develop the repertoire, Ma and the musicians returned to the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where they held their first musical workshops in 2000. The recording includes music by two of China's leading film composers – Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin – as well as the works of such innovative members of the ensemble as the Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor; Alim Qasimov, vocalist and master of the Azerbaijani mugham musical tradition; Indian tabla virtuoso Sandeep Das; and Wu Tong, who also plays the xun, a type of ocarina that is among the most ancient of Chinese instruments.
"For me, the music on this album also crosses boundaries of time and space, revealing the unity among seemingly different traditions," Ma says. "The first part of the album begins with a work by Sandeep Das entitled 'Mohini' (Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon). The second part explores origins and rootedness, evoking the memory of the nomadic peoples who traveled and lived along the Silk Road. The final third of the album is revelatory, including the transcendent vocals of Alim Qasimov and the serene harmonies of Zhao Jiping's 'Sacred Cloud Music.'"
Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon features 15 new works – one is an ensemble improvisation – that encompass the full scope of the Silk Road Project, founded in 1998 by Yo-Yo Ma, who is also its artistic director.
The Silk Road is the name for the trade route that, for centuries, linked Europe and the Eastern world. Travel along the Silk Road resulted in a complex web of interconnections between cultures that affected not only formal aesthetic expression but folk expression as well in a vast array of cultures. During the course of the Silk Road Project, composers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan have been invited to contribute music that evokes this intersection of cultures, and these works are sampled on the project's first recording, Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, released by Sony Classical in 2002.
Yo-Yo Ma is an exclusive Sony Classical artist, and his most recent release is Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone, a collaboration with the renowned Italian film composer that includes new treatments of some of Morricone's most popular film scores. In 2004, Ma won his 15th Grammy for Obrigado Brazil, his best-selling Sony Classical release that celebrates the music of Brazil. The success of that recording and a subsequent international tour inspired a sequel disc, released earlier this year, entitled Yo-Yo Ma Obrigado Brazil Live in Concert, which went on to win a Latin Grammy. Ma also recently released Vivaldi's Cello, his first recording of the music of Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi, with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, as well as Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet and the Silk Road Project itself, are featured on Sony Classical's Web site at www.sonyclassical.comand on Yo-Yo Ma's artist domain at www.Yo-YoMa.com. More information on the Silk Road Project – including background on the performers, instruments, concert performances and workshops – can be found on the Silk Road Project Web site at www.silkroadproject.org.